The largest meeting point for former and current members of the Fellowship of Friends is the Greater Fellowship, you can sign up to the Greater Fellowship community and connect with mostly former members of the Fellowship of Friends, as well as: some current members, family members of former/current members, and others interested in the Fourth Way here.

If you decide to interact as well as digest, this is where you can start.

And as always (and above else), enjoy and have fun.

At the Moderator’s discretion, excessive abuse, personal attacks, as well as deliberate attempts to unmask people taking part in the discussion will result in a warning followed by a ban from the discussion.

Participants require 1 moderated comment before they can start communicating in real-time. (ie. if you are new to the discussion, your comment will appear about 1 day after it has been posted, any subsequent comments will appear instantaneously).

Comments

I wonder for how long are we going to allow Daily Card to play yo-yo with us without going anywhere? Is it not clear by now that he has a particular and definite agenda and is pretty successful from one point of view? Have others observed that he too has his own aim in terms of legalities? When he stated recently that the blog has the one and only aim to destroy the Fellowship, isn’t he looking for affirmations hard enough from the blog itself that can justify legal action against it? At least that is what I understood and took it up so that they cannot target the blog. And here in post 278 DC. “Regardless of what the FoF is, school or otherwise, people who join and stay are exercising their right to Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness” is he not trying to use the laws in their benefit? Wouldn’t anyone in their place?

What seems clear by now is that there’s no dialogue here, no communication, no human contact but a very definite agenda with interests. Is it worth playing the game?

How many of you think this is sincerely a student? I do. I would swear that this is Girard Haven but then I would also swear that there are fifty or more Girard Haven’s in the Fellowship. They were all cut with the same scissors and understand the pattern and the method in detail. I could not believe it was so bad at the beginning of my blogging because so many spoke like him but it is clear now. So it doesn’t matter if it’s Girard or another member or someone they actually paid to make the points and lead the blog to a place in which it too can be attacked legally. It doesn’t look like they are very successful but I think it’s worth being aware and then questioning, where do many here wish to go with Daily Cardiac? Yes, he’s on the boat with us and without us, where are we going? Is he playing with us? Using us? Tiring us? What are his aims and how far has he gotten to them? Has he really helped us more than we’ve helped him and the Fellowship? For how long can we turn around this dead pole?

Just the facts 311.

Thanks for that. They are both beautiful works but it’s in Theory of Celestial Influences that he connects science and esoteric knowledge.

Do you ever notice or comment when people get it right?

Nothing personal but it’s worth noticing that we have difficulty acknowledging the positive aspects of the world and each other and are very sensitive to mistakes.

PARADISE, Calif. (ARK) — Leonardo Da Vinci met with the blog team to discuss long-term strategies and joint projects early Thursday morning. The session took place in this quiet community located about 90 minutes north of Sacramento.

“One of our goals is to cause as much friction for Robert Burton as we possibly can — while of course staying within the confines of the law,” Da Vinci said. “We might deliver some bumps and bruises here and there, a loud crashing sound during one of his fine dinners, give him a clumsy waitress, or he might need to wait through security lines at the airport like the rest of us — whatever is necessary.”

But in recent years, Da Vinci has adjusted his operation after realizing Burton had “strayed from the intended path somewhat.” Da Vinci and the blog team have been meeting for the past two years in hopes of calling attention to Burton’s so-called “indiscretions.”

“Well, saying Burton ‘strayed somewhat’ is a bit of an understatement,” Da Vinci said Thursday, “and so is the word ‘indiscretion’. But you get what I mean. Burton isn’t being forthright and honest with his followers, and his teaching has seriously strayed into fear and superstition. That concerns me.”

Da Vinci, who has spent most of the past 35 years in a distant sector of the Milky Way, said he was unaware of Burton’s actions until early 2007. His scout team of angels — known as the A Team — dealt with Burton during that time. But their communication link with Da Vinci was hit with long-term outages because of solar storms and unusual amounts of cosmic interference.

“We’re on top of the situation now,” Da Vinci said. “We don’t have anything dramatic up our sleeves — and if we did, we wouldn’t tell you — but the biggest friction we’re giving him right now is a guy who calls himself Daily Cardiac.”

Da Vinci disputes the claim that Burton is “awakening” or “has awakened” due to the onslaught of friction delivered by his A Team.

“We’re just keeping him in check,” Da Vinci said. “The more palm trees he plants the better. It keeps him busy. So far, for example, he’s doing less damage than your average, run-of-the-mill Jim Jones or David Koresh. We want to at least keep it that way. The winery, the Ming furniture, the French furniture, and so on — all that stuff has been keeping him occupied. I think we’ve been successful overall.”

Several blog team members dispute just how successful the A Team has been, and they’ve asked for a change of approach. No agreement has been reached, and no timeline has been set. Still, bloggers vow to work closely with Da Vinci during present and future projects.

Burton was unavailable for comment, according to a handsome young man who answered the front door at the Galleria.

Elena – thanks for the support. It’s appreciated! Yes, I agree that Walter may be a double agent!

Walter.

Just to state (again) the obvious points at variance with your repeated attempts to lump any kind of Gurdjieff group in with the fellowship:

1. There is no ‘authority’ figure in the Gurdjieff groups. No conscious being, no guru, no-one who’s going to make life easy by making all the choices for you.

2. No-one has abnormal sexual demands and tries to force them on you.

3. There are no excessive financial demands – fees are about 5% of what you’d pay in the fellowship, and you can see where every penny goes.

There is no manipulation because there is no reason for it. No-one I have I come across has any agenda in respect of money, sex and power. There are simply a group of senior students who have spent a lifetime in the work, and their advice is worth hearing for someone interested in it.

I have no idea where all your ‘research’ comes from, but it’s a straightforward nonsense in practice. Nice-sounding theory, but no relationship to reality whatsoever.

I see DCs contributions as a support for the current members who have managed to retain some specks of conscience.

His (or their) writings are so dogmatic that they really shake one up. I really doubt the person(s) has an agenda or even an aim. But again who knows with the present situation in the FOF?

In my profession I deal with a lot of people. DCs responses and writings make him appear as someone who lacks emotional intelligence. He might not be like this of course, we are mainly dealing with words on a computer screen here, he could just be seeing himself as THE ONE who will communicate to the rest of the world how fabulous the Fellowship Cult is and the rest of us here are liars, frustrated, and uninterested in “awakening” individuals.

I also doubt that the current Council and policy in the FOF are supportive of someone like DC (but again I am only speculating here). When sometime ago another guy would appear and write his thing on the blog and I still had “connections” in the FOF hierarchy, I know they thought he was just pure rubbish.

Just let the man do his thing. This is probably the only forum he can express himself. They is no freedom of speech in the FOF. You just sit around either listening to RB, or watching DVDs with RB, or reading his stolen quotations coming to your center in a circle every week, or you are having a refined dinner and nod your head every time someone quotes RB.

Thank you for adding your voice to this river and sharing the problems people inside are having.

You make it obvious again that were we serious about helping we would have a more concerted action in relation to offering people possibilities outside the Fellowship.
What can ex-members offer to members?

What are the immediate needs of someone leaving the Fellowship?

Like any victim of a Cult, members leaving need emotional support. Apparently from a group more than a psychiatrist or personal therapist, suggests Singer. That alone is interesting because what needs to be filled is the sense of community.

The blog is awfully harsh in that sense: we’ve heard so many things, repeated them so many times that posts like Panorea’s and the actual plea behind them tend to go unnoticed. Stimulating people to participate with something more than words is difficult.

I’m a rare visitor of the Greater Fellowship. Are jobs and other possibilities being posted there regularly or are we still reduced to the capacity of personal friendships without establishing the mechanisms of a civilized community in which help can come without personal privileges?

I would be willing to help with a little cash every month for the next two years at least towards an organization with the aim of helping ex-members and in whatever other way I could.

After two years of leaving where I would have appreciated a great deal of support was in finding people who understood I had been raped and treated me as such. Raped in the whole of my integrity even if not physically unless we are able to understand that our effort, personal belongings and money are also an extension of our selves as anything else we connect to.

One leaves the Fellowship a perfect wreck and the blog is not prepared to understand or treat people with the necessary care. William recently, who seemed still much connected to the Fellowship even if she left a long time ago, was battered badly by us instead of treating her with some patience. I do ask for your forgiveness William. I too am still vulnerable.

So the need to have one’s state acknowledged seems number one necessity for some time. The example of going into a police station and being treated as if one were a whore after one was raped, which is what Daily Card is doing with us every day, takes legitimacy away from the experience and induces many into doubt of what actually happened to them. Doubt, guilt and self-deprecation.

The other area of “what next” also matters.

I would term it as “rebuilding essence” meaning that if members have the opportunity to reconnect to the people and the place where they grew up, that has an amazingly positive effect. It is a practical form of self-remembering if one understand that self remembering is not just about remembering an abstract invisible self but a very definite physical one with a name.

Participating in a group, blog or whatever helps shed the pseudo cult personality.

On a different note and offering it here for a lack of somewhere else, if none of the above are available I’ve found being alone is also wonderful even though I’ve hardly been alone with the blog. It is a sort of aloneness but I’ve had to hold on to it desperately. Still, one can use the blog without allowing it to become an imposition to one’s self and keep remembering that some of the people in here are simply wanting and willing to help.

But being away from the environment and impositions of the Fellowship on how one acts, thinks, feels and express one’s self is healing in itself. Destroying the cult personality is not new to us members in the sense that we already went through the process of destroying our own life personality. The same feelings of awkwardness and not knowing who the hell one is or what one is meant to be or to be doing are experienced after leaving as they were experienced inside and it is a long process in which the more help one has the better. To understand that one is not alone in this world and that there are beings willing to help one is the first step towards understanding one’s place with pride and dignity. We are loving beings no matter how much we’ve been separated from love.

Probably the most difficult aspect for most people is that of finding a positive enough outlook on life and themselves on which they can stand. No matter how much we know about the horrors of life or the Fellowship or ourselves, if we cannot find a solid enough sense of our own beauty and the beauty of life, it is impossible to stand upright. Cults are professionals in keeping people convinced of their lack of worthiness, their lack of beauty and the first thing anyone needs to do while still in, is find his or her own worth and trust that, so that he/she can take a peek outside. Our conditions vary and some who have jobs and instinctive stability have some advantages but they are limited in terms of their psychological dependency on the Fellowship. That is the problem for many inside. But the process of shedding the Fellowship personality, which is false and detrimental to one’s own possibilities, is a powerful and wonderful experience.

Finally Panorea, I would like to offer to anyone you know or others inside the option of using the cottage I have on the Caribbean for one month. I personally think it is a beautifully healing experience to be able to be on one’s own with one’s self and little pressure from the outside. The Rio Cedro experience is VERY organic and wonderful because of that too as soon as you adapt. You can go around in a swimming suit from the Ocean to the hammock, to the book, to a walk. I would not be there probably but the couple working in the place would look and care after whoever is there. They live in their own cottage forty feet away. It is safe. There are no guerrillas in the area. It would cost a ticket to Medellin-Monteria, fifty dollars or so from Monteria to Rio Cedro, the small town near the cottage and about forty dollars for food per week. Just resting for a month from the Fellowship in a very different and beautifully natural environment would help a lot of people recover some contact with their own self. I offer this to members and ex-members without conditions. That is, whether they leave or not after resting. I’ve been charging twenty dollars per day per person but if someone does not have any money and needs the option, they can have it for free. This a beautiful summery windy season to go there. The rainy season is not pleasant. I haven’t been able to get pictures up but when I figure that out I’ll let you know.

In terms of jobs or a life in Colombia, I don’t think most of you would like it. I wouldn’t recommend that option for someone who is in a weak place within him or her self. The more “familiar” a place is for a victim or an older person, the sooner he or she can recover. The wonders of Colombia are many, but even wonders need people to communicate them. Cold tourism is not sharing and without sharing there’s little healing.

Panorea, I sent post 8 in before reading your number six. You’re probably right but probably only to a mild extent, unfortunately because both aspects are alive and well in the Fellowship. The few people with enough common sense to want to make it fairly human and very often the same people with the only sense of survival of the Fellowship with no common sense at all and it is these attitude what has overridden the other one for decades. They look fairly normal from the outside but after living and sleeping with Daily Card for four years, he is not making anything up: The Girard Haven’s of the Fellowship are faithfully him. They are not making up the fact that they cannot acknowledge the facts. They have lost the ability to perceive them. They are not making up or faking that they sincerely believe that there is nothing wrong with their made up fantasy, they are willing to protect it with their life because they have no other life. Do you really understand that? These are not made up sociopaths; they are as real as many in prison.

I agree with you that he has much helped many here realize the extent of the madness that they carry and for that alone we should be grateful but the madness that he carries is as dangerous here as in the Fellowship. He does have an agenda and undermining the effect he has in reassuring those that resonate with it will not help us.

I guess what I’m asking is, do you, and each one of you here, as a member who left recently, realize that you yourself have been programmed for years and years to perceive the manipulations of the Fellowship Cult on people’s lives as normal?

Do you realize the extent to which each of Daily Cards statements is sociopathic?

Do members realize that to the extent that you are personally, that is, instinctively, emotionally or intellectually dependent on the Fellowship your own perception of what is happening inside is marred?

No matter how reasonable Daily Cardiac’s statements sound, like Daily Cards did which were our Daily Bread, they are manipulations to legitimize the status quo of the Fellowship Cult? They are meant to manipulate our perception of what is right and wrong? To deceive us from perceiving that what might sound or seem right is actually hiding the deeper wrongs?

What is happening with Daily Cardiac on the blog is a faithful reflection of the whole Fellowship phenomenon in which the dark side is disguised with gold alchemy and pretty quotes.

Why would we allow it here?

As much as I stand for open participation I am sick and tired of being manipulated by Daily Card and seeing him manipulate the blog. I would not participate in a blog where fascist propaganda were being dealt out and Daily Cardiac is Fellowship propaganda.

I do think it’s been useful because he’s exposed the techniques the Fellowship uses inside and that reality is more obvious to many now as exposed by the enablers themselves but it does bring us to the question of what expressions enforce freedom and which hamper it? The freedom to hurt people is no freedom at all. It is a form of slavery of the human spirit. Although we live in a time of such freedoms beginning with how Television and films are used, acting against such harmful poverty is also a task for the near future.

DC
“People who are attracted to schools don’t want to give their own viewpoints; they are bored silly with their own viewpoints. They want to receive a conscious viewpoint – something they can’t find on their own.”

“Of course the aim in putting oneself under the will of a teacher is to acquire a higher viewpoint and apply it to one’s life. That is exactly what people in the school are doing on a daily basis.”

I don’t know how long you have been in the FoF, but since you once mentioned having met me, it must be at least 14 years. One would hope that with all this daily school practice, your mirror has become polished enough so that you can start to enjoy your own clear viewpoint and look at the world from your own perspective. Instead, from what you write it’s clear that you are still heavily dependent on the viewpoint of your master, and have in fact fallen prey to a peculiar form of personal blindness that forces you to filter all input through the deformed mirror of his theories, rationalizations and outright lies. The only times I see your writings deviate from Burton’s own statements and dogmas is when they are just too unpopular or off the wall even for you to defend in this venue.

Now, pretty please, stop playing the blog victim and get rid of some of those cobwebs laying all over your own mirror, you silly boy!

From Res Ipsa loquitur
A list of circumstances and convictions upon the Fellowship of Friends and Robert Burton that are as applicable now as they were 10 years ago.

Fellowship Of Friends-A Cult In Oregon House, California.
Another lawsuit filed against F.O.F/Renaissance Vineyard &
Winery, Robert Burton, Girard Haven, Abraham Goldman, Helga
Ruth Mueller, and Clair Bowen–directors of Fellowship of
Friends, Inc. The lawsuit brought by Troy Buzbee and filed
on April 29, 1996 in the County of Yuba.
Complaint for Damages is in Case # 060209
1. Fraud
2. Intentional infliction of emotional distress
3. Negligent infliction of emotional distress
4. Breach of fiduciary duty
5. Negligent supervision
6. Sexual misconduct with a minor
7. Sexual harassment
8. Wrongful discharge
9. Negligence
10. Failure to pay minimum wage
11. Battery
Fellowship Of Friends Cult – By Michelle M. Milligan
“Within the pages of the case are facts and details concerning sexual and perverted acts practiced by Burton, his philosophies and ideologies expected of the members.”
According to the case, Robert Burton, “The Teacher”, as referred to by members, began the corporation Fellowship of Friends in 1971.

The “Fourth Way philosophy is taught and practiced by the Fellowship of Friends. The location of The Fellowship of Friends herein referred to as the F.O.F. is in Oregon House, however the F.O.F. refers to their location rather as “The Renaissance”.

Troy Buzbee’s father became a member of the F.O.F. in 1976. Richard Buzbee’s son Troy was only seven years of age. Richard Buzbee was told that if he paid his teaching payments each month and followed the tasks and suggestions of the teacher, Robert Burton that he would
enter “the way,” become “conscious” and “immortal.” He was told that Burton was a “conscious being” and that he was “celibate.” He was told that he could trust Burton completely with his body and soul.

From 1976 through May 1994 Troy’s father was a member of the Fellowship of Friends. As Plaintiff Troy Buzbee grew up he regarded Robert Burton as a God.
According to the case distinction between Burton and Troy’s father were not clear to him at times. Troy Buzbee became a member on October 10, 1966 when he was 17 years of age, virgin.

After Defendant Burton and Defendant corporation Fellowship Of Friends, INC’s factual representations and undue influence caused Troy Buzbee to lose his ability to think independently, he became increasingly subject to the domination, control and undue influence practiced, implemented, and used by said Defendants.

In direct consequence of such deception, coercive persuasion, brainwashing and undue influence, Defendant Burton used Troy Buzbee, among hundreds of
other young men, for the partial gratification of his satyriasis, an uncontrollable compulsion to engage in sexual conduct with scores, if not hundreds, of men. In addition thereof, Defendant Burton exploited Troy Buzbee for the provision of cheap labor, well under the minimum
wage.

Said exploitation continued off and on until the time when Troy Buzbee terminated his membership with Fellowship of Friends, Inc., in August 1994.

Commencing in December 1986, Burton, would have “teaching dinners” during which he would ply Troy with alcoholic beverages. After one particular such meal in December 1986, Burton instructed Troy to come to Burton’s room and to shut and lock the door. Burton told Troy that
Burton was “an angel in a man’s body”, and the gods wished for Troy to be close to Burton. Defendant Burton then held in an embrace.

Defendant Burton said, “influence C wishes you to be close with me. “He repeatedly assured Troy that his “soul was not (his) body, and that the angels wished for (Troy) to be with (Burton).” Burton explicitly told Troy that the “angels” wanted Troy to disrobe, and the “angels” wanted Troy to submit to Burton’s sexual advances because Burton himself was an “angel”, a goddess in a man’s body.”

Burton said to Troy, “I promise you I am an angel in a man’s body.” “You have to remember that I did not write the play about Robert Burton.” Burton would kiss Troy on the forehead which he said represented the seat of the soul and then instruct Troy to “separate” from his body and just “let go”. Burton reminded Troy that Troy’s
body would soon decay while his soul was immortal.

Burton told Troy that he would talk to him after he died using the same soft voice he used at the time. Burton explained that for him the interaction with Troy went beyond conventional sex and into “supersex”, which was a
method characterological evolution.

Defendant Burton stated, “My
sexuality is on the level of Super-Sex.” From December ‘86–April ‘94, Troy submitted to Burton’s demands, which were: Drop out of college, provide Burton with sexual favors and provide hour long massages after Burton had been sexually serviced.

Burton used money from the corporation to pay other members for performing specific sexual acts. In denominations of $50 or $100.

The case mentions one case of “specific sexual acts” performed on Burton by Karl Feldman, Troy Buzbee’s best friend. Burton spoke openly about his sexuality in the form of jokes at the all-male dinners that he would often lavishly host at all-male, all-you-can-drink “symposiums.” He would boast that “one hundred boys would not be enough(for his sexual appetite).”

Troy worked at the gatehouse on F.O.F. property. Burton directed certain members who are “guards” to arm themselves with firearm-type weapons. Burton then had him become his “personal” guard. During the next four years Troy observed numerous men in Burton’s room in a single night. Troy was asked to massage Burton after his lovers left.

According to the case, Burton suffers from sexually transmitted diseases. He made no effort to tell Troy. As a consequence, Troy acquired viral herpes. In addition, Troy suffered from stomach ulcers.

Renaissance Vineyard & Winery, Inc. was built as a bomb-
shelter in obeisance to Defendant Burton’s prophecies regarding massive and wide-spread disaster and chaos in the near future.

Defendant Burton uses Renaissance Vineyard & Winery, Inc as his alter ego in the same way he uses Defendant Fellowship Of Friends, Inc.

According to the case…..
At all times mentioned herein Defendants Girard Haven, Abraham Goldman (also an attorney), Helga Ruth Mueller, and Clair Bowen were members of the board of directors of the Defendant corporation, Fellowship Of Friends, INC.

At all times mentioned herein all of the Defendants were acting as the agents and servants of each other and in doing the acts complained of acted within the scope of their agency and employment and at the direction and with the knowledge and ratification of the other Defendants.

The Defendant Burton at all times mentioned herein, dominated, influenced, and controlled, and does now dominate, influence and control the Defendant corporations and the directors and officers thereof, as well as the business, property and affairs of the Defendant corporations.

At all times mentioned herein, there existed and does now exist, a unity of interest and ownership between the Defendant Burton and the Defendant corporations; the individuality and separateness of said Defendant and Defendant corporations has ceased; and despite
knowledge of these facts, Defendant corporations and its officers and directors have had notice of acquiesced in and agreed, consented to, and ratified the conduct of Defendant Burton as herein alleged,

At all times since its corporation to the present time, the Defendant corporations have been and are now a mere shell and naked framework which the Defendant Burton has used and does now use as a conduit for the conduct of his personal business, property and affairs.

Defendant corporations are subject to a unity of control, and its corporate structure was created as an attempt to avoid payment of taxes and civil judgments and to confuse courts and those seeking redress for these Defendant’s acts. Due to the unity of personnel, commingling of assets, and commonality of business objectives, these Defendant’s attempts at separation of Defendant corporations and
Defendant Burton should be disregarded.

Defendant Robert Burton directs, controls and operates Defendant corporations and uses them to enforce his orders and carry out his attacks on groups, agencies or individuals, including the acts against Troy alleged herein, to the extent there is no separate identity between Burton and said Defendant corporations and any claim of such separate identity should be disregarded.

The Defendant corporations were created and are being continued and maintained pursuant to a fraudulent plant, scheme and device, created and operated by the Defendant Burton, whereby the benefits and
product of the income and revenue of the Defendant corporations are diverted to the use and enjoyment of the Defendant Burton through the Defendant corporations to himself while concealing the truth of his financial relationship with Defendant corporations.

Prior to the formation of F.O.F. and Renaissance Vineyard & Winery, Burton formed a conspiracy in concert between the corporations for the express purpose and intent of developing and implementing a plan and scheme which would permit Burton and co-conspirators to:

a. use, abuse and exploit the fiduciary relationship between the Defendant Burton and the Defendant corporation Fellowship Of Friends, INC,, on one hand and the members of and contributors to the Defendant corporation Fellowship Of Friends, INC,, on the other hand
for their own personal unlawful gain; and

b. to use, abuse and exploit the fiduciary relationship between the Defendant Burton, as ‘founding minister’, and selective members of the Defendant corporation Fellowship Of Friends, INC., for the express purpose and intent of performing unlawful and perverted sexual acts upon the persons of said members, including Troy, and by causing certain of the members, including Troy, to work for Defendant corporation Renaissance Vineyard & Winery, INC.,

and Defendant corporation Fellowship Of Friends, INC.

That all times pertinent hereto, the Defendant corporation Fellowship Of Friends, INC., and the Defendant Renaissance Vineyard and Winery, INC, were formed and operated by Burton and said other Defendants for their sole and exclusive aggrandizement and to create an ambiance of neo-religious import which was and is currently being used by Burton and the other Defendants to manipulate, unduly influence, and control the minds, bodies, and the assets of the members of the Defendant
corporations for the sole and exclusive purpose of 1) satisfying Burton’s satyriasis-his voracious appetite for perverted sexual pleasure and elegant life-style; and

2) diverting the contributions and donations of the membership to their own use and purposes.

Members of the Fellowship are required to donate ever-increasing sums of money as they become further and further vested as members of the Fellowship with the caveat that when donations required of them are
not timely and completely made their membership is either revoked or they become indentured servants of the Defendant corporation in residence at its principal place of business for nominal compensation and required to perform degrading menial tasks of a full-time basis
at the whim and caprice of the Defendant Burton

and other authorized representatives of the corporate Defendant Fellowship Of Friends, INC., and Defendant Renaissance Vineyard And Winery, INC.

All donations made by members of the Fellowship are devoted either to the continuing worldwide recruitment of new and replacement members with fresh money to contribute to “the cause,” or the acquisition of assets, including but not limited to, Defendant Renaissance Vineyard and Winery, INC,

which are ostensibly being acquired for the use and
benefit of the membership but which are in reality being acquired for the personal benefit and aggrandizement of Defendant Burton and some or all of the other individual Defendants named herein.

Meanwhile, Defendant Burton annexes free and unfettered use and enjoyment in and to the assets of the Defendant corporation Fellowship Of Friends, INC., Defendant corporation Renaissance Vineyard And Winery, INC., and the benefits to be derived there from, including, but not limited to, the provision money for bribes to young male members to prostitute themselves in an intensification of
Defendant Burton’s compulsion and demand for sexual servicing of his long-standing state of satyriasis.

The entire, purpose, scope and extent of the aforesaid plan and scheme as implemented by said Defendants is to effectively deny the members of the Defendant corporation Fellowship Of Friends, INC., not only the right to participate in its rituals and teachings on an ongoing basis but also, and of equal importance, to deny members of said Defendant corporation, including Plaintiff, of their just right to participate as beneficiaries entitled to use and enjoy
the property of said Defendant corporation.

Haven, Goldman Mueller, Bowen knew of all these afore-mentioned practices of Burton.

They have agreed and abetted Burton in his efforts. They knew of Burton’s diseases and said nothing.

At all times pertinent hereto, Defendant Burton, and the other Defendants, caused Troy’s mental and emotional centers to become deceptively and coercively inculcated with the following tenets:

a. Defendant Burton communicated with “C-influence” which was provided by “44 angels” which were each individually named including, but not limited to, Jesus, “Benjamin Franklin,” “Lincoln” and “Bach,”

and that Burton was the Fellowship’s only connection with
said “angels.”

b. Defendant was and is the most important person on the planet since Christ.

Defendant Burton claims a numerology of consciousness where he has already advanced to a man number 7.3, with Christ being a man number 8.

Burton is above man-made laws, a moral law unto himself.

c. “C-influence” brought Troy to the Fellowship and Defendant Burton, and that Troy’s interactions with Defendant Burton would be the most important relationship that Troy could ever have.

d. Defendant Burton is assisted by “C-influence” to guide the spiritual evolution of the member “students” with “shocks” designed to help them “awaken”.

e. The members of the Fellowship are special, and set apart by higher forces for survival. Members of Defendant Burton’s “inner circle” must associate only among Fellowship members must disregard non-members, and demonize ex-members who are critical of Burton whom “the =gods” will “destroy.”

Such ex-members’ opportunities for growth and
development are terminated failing to submit to Burton.

f. Defendant Burton possesses gift of prophecy that is infallible.

g. In 1998 California will “fall” in huge earthquake whereupon people will die in massive numbers.

h. In 2006 there will be an Armageddon, where all humans everywhere except for members of the Fellowship will be expunged by higher forces.

i. Members of the Fellowship will inherit the world’s material goods and act as the “Ark” for a new civilization based on that of the Greeks of about 450 B.C., and are thus presently preparing themselves to bear the torch of civilization now and in the future.

j. By following Defendant Burton’s directives so as to gain “being” (depth of character) through separating from suffering and immersing themselves in culture, mostly Western art, classical music, opera and ballet, Fellowship members, including Troy, are preparing themselves
for being the “Ark”.

k. Everything the members of the Fellowship, including Troy, had learned since birth was “false” and caused him to exist in a kind of “waking sleep.”

The Defendant Burton informed Troy that in order
to “awaken”, he had to replace what was “false” with what was “true” which was defined as the system of ideas as The Fourth Way, including all the “new” knowledge that Burton had added to that system.

l. Defendant Burton stated, and states, to the general Fellowship and to Troy, that without “C-influence” Troy could not “awaken”.

m. Defendant Burton stated, and states, to the general Fellowship and to Troy, that to “awaken” was the only way to avoid having the purpose of his life be to provide “food for the moon.”

n. Defendant Burton stated, and states, that Troy’s people outside the group as “life-people,” he said were “tragedies.” Burton said Troy’s own mother was such a “life-person” and that the Fellowship was Troy’s “real” family and Burton was his “Father.”

o. Defendant Burton stated, and states, to the general Fellowship and to Troy, that any challenge to the extent of Burton’s excesses of greed and satyriasis to be a lack of understanding of his practice of “crazy wisdom” which he asserts that he must force himself to perform is forcing himself to live that way for the good of the members as a “lesson.”

The best way to deal with an arrogant person is to understand why he is being arrogant. This may sound odd, but the truth is, as soon as you know the reason behind his arrogance you will pity him.

Arrogant people think that they are always right, they think that they know the best answers to all life problems and they think that they are better than most of the ordinary people. Arrogance is no more than a shield that covers inner emptiness and sometimes an inferiority complex.

What Causes Arrogance

Arrogance is a defense mechanism used by the subconscious mind in order to prevent further criticism. If someone had a terrible childhood and if he was hurt by others he may develop arrogance in order to prevent further criticism from hurting him, the trick usually works, because if someone criticized him he can simply devalue him and assume that he is worthless.

Arrogant behavior can be a result of feeling neglected. If someone felt that he is not getting all the attention he deserves, he may unconsciously become arrogant just to attract some of the lost attention.

Arrogant people are single minded, they either think that they are superior to others or inferior to them. This arrogant person who is intimidating you feels inferior to someone else because this is how his mind works, this arrogance may be nothing more than a way to cover this feelings of inferiority he experiences when dealing with someone else.

The weak Point of Arrogant people

Dealing with an arrogant person is much easier than you think. Just treat him as if he is not superior, I am not asking you to ignore him, just treat him as if he is like the other normal people and this will be enough to let him avoid you. The arrogant person is carving for attention so if you ignored him you will remind him of his old wound and this will let him forget about his superiority when dealing with you.

Impressing an arrogant person is very simple, just convince him that you can do something that is of importance to him better than him and he will become impressed. The moment you make those people believe that you are more powerful than them, they will stick to you like your shadow.

Why was it essential for FOF-style evolution that Isis/Apollo/Renaissance be preserved as the seat of squalid, deeply entrenched poverty over decades? How can anyone in their right mind think Isis lifestyle is or ever was actually good for their children, YOUR children? How much more time out of your brief lifetime are you willing to throw away, your precious time bleeding away like good money after bad, because waking up from the FOF dream is just too unthinkable? When do the wives realize that their hubbies didn’t just have a few isolated experiences of sex with RB, but still do it every time they go to a wine cellar dinner? When does the young newlywed realize how at-risk she is of a nasty sexual disease from that gorgeous RB-boy import she snagged? When do we stop being mad and just become sad, because it is all too sad and pathetic and soul-sucking? Maybe that’s the whole question: RB sucked a lot of cocks, but what about the souls, your souls, that he continues to suck and suck…and suck?

From ipsa res loquitur with gratitude to Unanimo and writers especially for Daily Cardiac: These are the facts that you are blind to:

I have personally experienced the greedy, grabbing completely selfish ass ault of the “beyond feminine dominance”Queen of the hive and the blind eye and closed hearts of the procurer drones and their paradoxical judgement/envy.
While they watched the constant stream of situationaly compromised young and not so young men enter the heavily over loaded to one side arena of the Queen, with what seemed like the complacent attitude of, as long as my security isnt compromised, who cares if there are some casualties, if they leave then surely they were weak and unsuited to evolve thats why “C influence released them.

Bruce 216: “Even though many of us lived together in the boy cottage, many of us were walking around in a daze asking ourselves “why was it happening to just me”. We were so shell shocked that none of us could assume it was happening to others. No one would speak of it. ”

Worse, and this is important, living these lies dishonored the efforts of his students, made a mockery of their truths. Then on, ever downwards, the web of deceit was woven thread by thread. Countless times, Burton told the lie of celibacy in the morning and that same evening raped one of his students (fucked them against their will), used blackmail and further lies to complete the deed, used the Work language to serve his own base purposes. Used their shame as a weapon to ensure their silence. Bruce has told it, how isolated each of the ‘boys’ in the Blake Cottage were, each thinking they were the only one. This poison contaminated every aspect of the Fellowship. What do the grandiose dreams of good declared by Burton mean in the face of this? In the balance, far less than nothing, a negative amount. The horror outweighs any possibility of good.

“I wouldn’t care if you were to call me a liar, because I could name the people you do not see around. And it would probably harm those people and their loved ones. You wouldn’t care because you merely use other people to justify your choices.”

“You wouldn’t care because you merely use other people to justify your choices.”

I don’t use anyone to justify my choices; I make them based on my own life experiences. Everyone is responsible for their own choices. Schools are not for everyone. I do know that the FoF works for me. I am far from perfect and my life is far from a perfect life, but it is much more real than before the FoF. And through the school I am able to embrace my life, embrace the person I am, the person I am becoming.

I know many others who feel the same way as I do. The people you describe for the most part must have avoided me or not shown their troubles to me as I honestly have not encountered them other than isolated cases. And you have been quite vague about the nature of their suffering, saying only they are depressed, they are getting old, they would be inconvenienced by leaving, they fear losing their friends if they left,etc.

Many people in life suffer greatly. People in schools don’t get absolved from life’s sufferings. I personally know people in life who have suffered more than any students I know. To live means to suffer. Whoever is drawing breath is suffering on some level. For the average person they would probably say that for each moment of joy they have experienced in life there has been at least as much suffering and disappointment, probably much more. It amazes me when people try to blame the FoF for life’s suffering.

Since the sequence came to the forefront about 2 years ago most of the students who were not committed to the school have departed on their own. The door to leave is open to everyone just as the door to stay is open to all.

I don’t like to hear about anyone suffering but suffering is a part of life. It cannot be avoided. The school has taught me to separate from my real suffering and to let go of much of my imaginary suffering. I cannot undo the suffering of any of the people you describe. Neither can you. They must bear whatever was allotted by Influence C and do their best not to attract undue suffering through their own actions and decisions.

It’s a fact that some people do not do well in schools. I don’t know why Influence C brings some people into the school when it’s not their play to remain or connect with the best the school has to offer but it does happen. They must have something to work out in order to see what they have to see about themselves.

The way I see it everything is a progress for someone with the correct attitude. Staying, leaving, not being sure of which. It can all be used to know oneself and move closer to the real..

You say you were close to Robert. So am I. He does not force anyone to do anything. He does not coerce. Persuasion is not coercion. Asking is not coercion. Suggesting is not coercion. People who act against their own nature fail to see that that may be the reason they are put into the situations they find themselves in – to actually for the first time come into contact with what their true convictions are and are not.

The school does not force anyone to do anything against their will – and that goes for conscious will or mechanical will. Whether we are aware of it or not we give our permission to all our actions. Whatever ruling faculty is in charge in that moment gives permission. But because we are not unified it often seems we are being coerced. But it is an internal coercion. Our internal parts, who take turns ruling for the moment, are in conflict with each other.

Students cannot entrust their comfort or earthly well being to a teacher because it is the teacher’s role to puncture that level of well being. Blaming others for what befalls one in life is futile. We are given the ability to learn from our experiences and not make the same mistakes and move on to the next lesson. Life does not coddle anyone, at least not after we are weaned from our mother’s breast.

Can you say for sure that the people you describe would have fared better in life without the FoF? I don’t see how you or anyone else could make the claim to know that someone would have been better off taking another road because we don’t know what road they would have taken or what was down that other road.

All of our lives are a journey. You cannot walk it for anyone else. They must walk it themselves and laugh and cry and stumble and get up. And at the end of our lives hopefully we are closer to our destination. Hopefully we did not take any injustices too seriously, or linger too long in front of any hearth.

Robert has many loving relationships with both men and women in the school. If you cannot acknowledge this fact we cannot have any real discussion or communication.

Robert receives the best and worst from all students because of the nature of his role. (Please read Walter Tanner’s 61-287) This is true for all teachers. If a spiritual teacher does not attract strong negative energy from his students he is not a real teacher, because matter opposes spirit in the quest to awaken. If he does not attract strong positive energy from his students he is not a real teacher, because spirit knows spirit and loves spirit.

No activities Robert has engaged in are off limits in the realm of consciousness. They are only off limits in the minds of individuals who are bound up in ordinary morality; especially the morality of modern western cultures that are still steeped in their puritanical origins. Don’t fall for the tricks of the lower self. None of the issues you bring up are on the same level as the issue of escaping from the wheel of misfortune of mechanical life.

If a spiritual teacher does not attract strong negative energy from his students he is not a real teacher, because matter opposes spirit in the quest to awaken.

Remember our little dance where I tried to get you to understand what a “self-sealing doctrine” was, and you kept insisting that it was the same thing as a “self-serving excuse”?

I’d like you to take another look at what you wrote above. This is a really good example of a self-sealing doctrine.

You are saying, if he gets bad flak that proves he’s not fake, because [spiritual law]. Then all bad flak just proves [spiritual law], even though bad flak might actually just mean he’s fake. Get it now?

Invasion of Privacy, Enticement of a Parent, Intensional Infliction of Emotional Distress, Child Endangerment, ‘Fetus Endangerment’ … See ‘Administration of Children and Families’. Inhumane Treatment of Animals

I learned that earlier in his reign Robert asked married women not to have kids and if they already did to give them away. Many apparently listened and obeyed. Apparently Linda was persuading pregnant women to have an abortion “to follow the will of the Teacher”. Gently ask older female students in FOF what happened to their kids.

Purchasing Awakening

Enticement of Parent, Enticement, Invasion of Privacy,

When I got pregnant I was leaving at Renaissance and my husband was on salary. We did not have the money to go to a doctor and were worried about future hospital bills.

My husband called Robert, but not until years later did he tell me what the teacher had said in response to a request for financial help for the birth, namely, that we had missed an opportunity to oppose our catholic upbring by not having an abortion.

A student on salary with family later suggested we go to County Health Services. Fortunately I had excellent care.

I never understood the few, lovely, women I met who had left their children in the care of others at the behest of the FOF leaders. Please note that the directives may have come from Robert after Center Directors told him of situations that might threaten the student’s devotion and or payments. (Darn those silly outside influences.)

16/284/A Former female student from long ago

Recklessness, Prenatal Tort

I knew of a visit from Fran, an older women, who was sent to escort a happily married women to a hospital for a late term abortion of healthy twins. Why was this married student in a happy relationship guided to go to the hospital to abort two healthy fetuses? Robert loved the beautiful, handsome husband and it was during the mid/late 70s when the School could not afford to have students be distracted by the emotional or expensive aspects of children.

This potential mother and father were in in pain but followed Robert’s directives – it was not a pretty situation. Years later Robert got his guy back and the wife was left to earn money outside of Renaissance while her husband was on salary.

How can you explain the disappearing of funds and sick people like J e-s-a, who can not afford medical treatment?

How do you live with the fact that Robert uses money from inheritances for different purposes then the original plan of the deceased student?

The way he lets students go especially the one who are not rich and do not have a lot of importance in art or the financial world is very cold and painful.

I encountered many students who were alcohol addicted and the pain they have/had. How do you live with this info?

16/304/Another name

Intentional & Negligent Infliction of emotional distress

Nearly 15 years after I left the Fellowship of Friends, I discovered I was very angry about what had happened to me there. In the intervening years, I had actively tried not to acknowledge it, mostly out of fear of some sort of divine retribution, I guess. After many years of chronic illnesses and chronic pain, things kind of came to a head, as they say. I acknowledged to myself that I was angry. It was quite shocking, actually how angry I was. I surprised myself.

I recommend: 1) a good therapist and 2) screaming into a pillow (to avoid upsetting the neighbors/family).

He uses the donations from the members (most of whom think the money is going to be spent for the common good) to buy outrageously expensive trinkets and clothes for his boy whores. Furthermore, most of those boys only give in to his advances because he says he is their conscious teacher, goddess, etc.

There are few stories from wives of RB boys for good reason – the shame involved is incredible. But, believe me, we are around in numbers. The shame is two fold, one at being a wife or serious girlfriend who’s beloved man is having regular sex with someone else. But the shame I most want to talk about is living with, witnessing, the man’s shame. My husband was with RB a long time ago and he is NOT homosexual and the sex was coerced (he was an ‘idiot’ type). He was shamed into it by not being a ‘high’ being as RB. After being shamed into the sex, it was incredibly shameful for him to have enjoyable physical sensations. It haunted him for years and impacted his manhood – his perception of his manhood. This is VERY IMPORTANT for a man, it goes to the very CORE OF HIS ESSENCE and has ABSOLUTELY NOTHING to do with feminine dominance or morality. RB shit on these men a festering scum cloud deep into their core. It takes extreme measures to heal from that and clean it out. I feel very sorry for you and very sorry for a woman who loves you – your cloud is still festering.

I remember a few years ago one Russian woman was crying (she left FOF) because she was raising a baby while her husband was sleeping with Robert and “to smooth things over” RB gave her a gift – a Russian scarf… Plus demanded to wear it every time she was going out where he could see her. That was pure sadism!

I (Ames) went to nursing school, and caught TB from a patient. I couldn’t work as a nurse, we got into financial trouble, and moved to Sacramento. During our time there, we were told that Brian had been stabbed and was in hospital. The official story, given by the center director, was that he had been stabbed 44 times, that this was a signal from C-Influence, and that he had been ‘released’ from the Fellowship, and had returned to his family in the mid-west.

I found out that the 44 stab wounds were mythological, invented by Burton. There had in fact been five.

About six months ago, I heard the rumors that he was dead. I checked around, and they appeared to be true.

This is what I can piece together, but I stress I have no first–hand information. I hear he went to the FoF gatehouse, and asked to see Burton. Burton refused to see him. He made his way down to Marysville, checked into a motel, and hanged himself.

She describes their deep friendship and his emotional and physical pain as Burton brutalized him, how he lay groaning on the floor of the Blake Cottage for hours after a session with him. This went on for years. She had first–hand knowledge, her job was to clean the Blake Cottage around the comings and goings of Burton, —and to clean the soiled underwear. She recalls the perfuming of Burton and the air around to cover the sordid smells.

My understanding is that Brian was a schizophrenic. The “higher being” that is Burton took ruthless advantage of his weaknesses and used him as his personal property, to do with as he wished. There was no compassion, no love, no understanding, Brian was just an object for his gratification. And when things became too uncomfortable, he was thrown away, like a soiled tissue, and with as much compunction. Compost. I channel my anger about this and other things that have happened as best as I can, right now mainly through the blog, and hopefully in a constructive way. There are many other stories yet to be told, by many, many people; they are slowly being revealed, and Burton will be shown, once and for all, for the horror that he is. That is my hope.

“You are saying, if he gets bad flak that proves he’s not fake, because [spiritual law]. Then all bad flak just proves [spiritual law], even though bad flak might actually just mean he’s fake. Get it now?”

Bad flak can indeed mean a fake. But a fake getting bad flak does not negate a real teacher getting the same. Get it now?

What I am saying is, if you have decided he’s a real teacher, and then he gets bad flak, the bad flak is automatically taken to mean [fulfillment of spiritual law]. That’s a self-sealing doctrine.

Bad flak can mean, at a minimum, one has to re-examine assumptions. If you’re willing to re-examine assumptions or “prior verifications” and reject them if they’re no longer true, you’re not blindly submitting to a self-sealing doctrine. Self-sealing doctrines operate to prevent bad flak from going in as anything other than [fulfillment of spiritual law.]

Re: Daily turd —
it’s an exercise in futility to try to reason with him… there’s no use talking to him, he demonstrates in every post that he lives in a state of denial… so what’s left but to talk ABOUT him and have a bit of fun…. i’ve tried to get down to ‘brass tacks’ in the past, encouraged him to cut the prattle and answer simply and truthfully…. i asked DC a couple of pages back if he currently or in the past has allowed that miscreant ‘the teacher,’ to suck his pecker…. the fact that he didn’t answer my question speaks volumes and explains a lot about DC’s underlying motive here.

it would be a bit like the british telling the american leaders (Adams, Jefferson, Washington, etc.) in the early 1770s, “Your very criticism, sirs, obviously proves the Righteousness of the Monarchy.”

“To be perceived, propaganda must evoke the interest of an audience and must be transmitted through an attention-getting communications medium.”

“Credibility alone must determine whether propaganda output should be true or false.”

“The purpose, content and effectiveness of enemy propaganda; the strength and effects of an expose; and the nature of current propaganda campaigns determine whether enemy propaganda should be ignored or refuted.”

“Credibility, intelligence, and the possible effects of communicating determine whether propaganda materials should be censored.”

“Material from enemy propaganda may be utilized in operations when it helps diminish that enemy’s prestige or lends support to the propagandist’s own objective.”

“Black rather than white propaganda may be employed when the latter is less credible or produces undesirable effects.”

“Propaganda may be facilitated by leaders with prestige.”

“The communication must reach the audience ahead of competing propaganda.”

” Propaganda must label events and people with distinctive phrases or slogans.”

“They must be capable of being easily learned”

“They must be utilized again and again, but only in appropriate situations”

“Propaganda to the home front must create an optimum anxiety level.”

“Propaganda must reinforce anxiety concerning the consequences of defeat”

“Propaganda must diminish anxiety (other than concerning the consequences of defeat) which is too high and which cannot be reduced by people themselves”

“Propaganda must facilitate the displacement of aggression by specifying the targets for hatred.”

“Propaganda cannot immediately affect strong counter-tendencies; instead it must offer some form of action or diversion, or both.”

I don’t use anyone to justify my choices; I make them based on my own life experiences. Everyone is responsible for their own choices.

_____No, you’re lying to yourself. You are responsible for the suffering of thousands of members. You personally are responsible and you are trying to convince yourself that you are not.

Schools are not for everyone.
________You’re not in a School, you’re in a Cult

I do know that the FoF works for me.
_________That’s not the real you talking, just a puppet at the service of a criminal organisation that probably pays your salary.

I am far from perfect and my life is far from a perfect life, but it is much more real than before the FoF.
______What was your life like before the Fellowship that you think raping, extorsioning, manipulating and hurting others is better?

And through the school I am able to embrace my life, embrace the person I am, the person I am becoming.

_________What is worth embracing about hurting others?

I know many others who feel the same way as I do.

_________Have they hurt as many people as you have?

The people you describe for the most part must have avoided me or not shown their troubles to me as I honestly have not encountered them other than isolated cases.

_______Have you been open to them or do you look at your watch and tell them you don’t have time and when they start questioning you, do you get angry and tell them to leave the School if that is what they want? That they are free to leave? That no one is holding them back after they’ve paid thirty years?

And you have been quite vague about the nature of their suffering, saying only they are depressed, they are getting old, they would be inconvenienced by leaving, they fear losing their friends if they left,etc.

__________There is nothing vague about people’s suffering on the blog except the fact that they are so damaged by the Fellowship that they cannot even stand up to their own name and act decisively against the Fellowship. That doesn’t justify your or the Fellowship’s actions though.

Many people in life suffer greatly.

________You do not have a right to replace real suffering with the unnecessary suffering the Fellowship imposes on people, which eventually becomes real suffering.

It amazes me when people try to blame the FoF for life’s suffering.

______I’m equally amazed when you try to justify the suffering the FOF imposes on members as life suffering.

Since the sequence came to the forefront about 2 years ago most of the students who were not committed to the school have departed on their own. The door to leave is open to everyone just as the door to stay is open to all.

_________Why do you need to lie so cheaply to yourself? The sequence had nothing to do with it, it’s the blog what has helped and will continue to help people step out. The sequence is just another idiotic artifice to deceive members about the Work they are doing.

I don’t like to hear about anyone suffering but suffering is a part of life. It cannot be avoided. The school has taught me to separate from my real suffering and to let go of much of my imaginary suffering. I cannot undo the suffering of any of the people you describe. Neither can you. They must bear whatever was allotted by Influence C and do their best not to attract undue suffering through their own actions and decisions.

_________Why do you justify the suffering Robert and the Fellowship imposes on its members as if it were from divine beings like any other cheap catholic priest? How much cheaper can you get with your doctrine? Is that the kind of bullshit you heard as a child and have not been able to overcome it?

You say you were close to Robert. So am I. He does not force anyone to do anything. He does not coerce. Persuasion is not coercion. Asking is not coercion. Suggesting is not coercion. People who act against their own nature fail to see that that may be the reason they are put into the situations they find themselves in – to actually for the first time come into contact with what their true convictions are and are not.

_____Why do you lie to yourself and others? Does it help you justify the many people you’ve abused? The many you’ve asked to leave unjustly? The many sufferings you’ve caused and explained out with the same reasoning? Do you realize how crazy you are revealing yourself on this blog after sixty-two pages of people telling about their suffering? For how long do you think you can stand on your loneliness and prove to yourself that you did not hurt anyone?

The school does not force anyone to do anything against their will –
_____Why are you lying again? We have at least fifty males here telling us how they were sexually used against their will. Why are you denying that?

and that goes for conscious will or mechanical will. Whether we are aware of it or not we give our permission to all our actions.

___________Does that help you justify the suffering you, Robert and the Fellowship have imposed on others? Like the policeman in the station that starts calling the woman that was raped whore because he hasn’t dealt with his own sexuality?

Whatever ruling faculty is in charge in that moment gives permission. But because we are not unified it often seems we are being coerced. But it is an internal coercion. Our internal parts, who take turns ruling for the moment, are in conflict with each other.

________Yes, you gave permission to all the abuses on men, women, children, old people and their families. You have paid and supported each and all the abuses that have happened in the Fellowship. You are responsible for every single man that has been raped, wife whose marriage has been abused and child that was aborted, abandoned or given away. You are responsible. You and each one of you inside.

Students cannot entrust their comfort or earthly well being to a teacher because it is the teacher’s role to puncture that level of well being. Blaming others for what befalls one in life is futile.

___________Why are you blaming the ex-members for their suffering? Because assuming your responsibility is too painful for you? Because you would take a gun and shoot yourself if in one blow you were able to see the damages you’ve caused to people over thirty seven years? Because it is too unbearable for you?

We are given the ability to learn from our experiences and not make the same mistakes and move on to the next lesson. Life does not coddle anyone, at least not after we are weaned from our mother’s breast.

___________Then why do you think that you have a right to be coddled by the Fellowship and protected in its boundaries although you’ve abused, raped and exploited thousands of members?

Can you say for sure that the people you describe would have fared better in life without the FoF?

___________Wouldn’t yours have been better off if you had not allowed the FOF to corrupt you so thoroughly? Where is your family? Do you have a wife? Your sisters and brothers? With the six billion dead people on the planet that so disgust you? Do you have any friends? Real friends? Not just people you lecture with the daily dogma? Can you touch your wife or do you need to imagine you’re watching porn to get an erection because you’ve become so desensitized that you cannot even feel another human being?

I don’t see how you or anyone else could make the claim to know that someone would have been better off taking another road because we don’t know what road they would have taken or what was down that other road.

_______It is so easy to know that you would have been better off without the Fellowship. That you would have had to face life in its own terms and not sink deep in the temptation of pretending that you were “better than life” and given a position in which Robert used you for the whole of a lifetime. It is extremely easy to affirm that you would have been better off without the Fellowship and the made up role that it gave you. Why is it so difficult for you to place yourself in somebody else’s shoes? Because you had to lose the sense of that so that you could keep watching while Robert raped them? Robbed them? Ridiculed them?

All of our lives are a journey. You cannot walk it for anyone else. They must walk it themselves and laugh and cry and stumble and get up. And at the end of our lives hopefully we are closer to our destination.

____________That is what you denied yourself. You gave up the possibility of walking your own path, laugh and cry when you stumbled and at the end of your life you are nothing but a cheap puppet to an extremely sick man who has to rape five or six boys a day to feel alive enough. How many do you rape? Only the computer and its porn? The made up world of words that can justify it all? Tell us Daily Cardiac, who do you or Robert Burton love? Or who loves you that knows you?

Hopefully we did not take any injustices too seriously, or linger too long in front of any hearth.

__________No, you didn’t. You let them all go through without paying serious attention to them. You ended up allowing and promoting them and getting off on each moment of humiliation that you managed to ring out of the members, satiating your sick self with the subtle and obvious suffering you managed to impose on them because of your position of authority, your endless power justified by the will of influence C and Robert Burton, second only to Jesus.

Robert has many loving relationships with both men and women in the school. If you cannot acknowledge this fact we cannot have any real discussion or communication.

__________One, I challenge you to give me one single name of a loving relationship you or Robert Burton has in the Fellowship Cult that is not marred and manipulated by the years of idolatry and submission.

Robert receives the best and worst from all students because of the nature of his role. (Please read Walter Tanner’s 61-287) This is true for all teachers. If a spiritual teacher does not attract strong negative energy from his students he is not a real teacher, because matter opposes spirit in the quest to awaken. If he does not attract strong positive energy from his students he is not a real teacher, because spirit knows spirit and loves spirit.

__________Both Robert and you are close to the end and you will suffer each person’s suffering that has come under your influence. You can read Rodney Collin if you care to find where he states that that is the lot for all of us. If you can assume part of that responsibility while you are still alive, you will not feel the full weight of it when you die and your chances of working with your responsibility will be much better dealt with in this lifetime. Hiding from yourself will not help you. You are your own witness. You misused the System and where it said do not judge, you allowed for injustice to prevail. Where it said, don’t identify, you allowed for indifference. Where it said, remember your self, you allowed for egolatry. Where it said, externally consider, you hurt people and never developed the second line and instead this cheap idolatry with which you are defending Robert. You think you can’t be seen but you’re transparent. You can never again hide no matter how much you flatter yourself. I know you in and out. I am a witness to your crimes. I will not let you live in peace because I love you enough and hate your crimes too much.

the fof cult likes to think of itself as a ‘church’ — for tax purposes:

“1. Authority and Power – abusive churches misuse and distort the concept of spiritual authority. Abuse arises when leaders of a church or group arrogate to themselves power and authority that lacks the dynamics of open accountability and the capacity to question or challenge decisions made by leaders. The shift entails moving from general respect… to one where members loyally submit without any right to dissent.

2. Manipulation and Control – abusive churches are characterized by social dynamics where fear, guilt, and threats are routinely used to produce unquestioning obedience, group conformity, and stringent tests of loyalty to the leaders are demonstrated before the group… concepts of the leader-disciple relationship tend to develop into a hierarchy where the leader’s decisions control and usurp the disciple’s right or capacity to make choices on spiritual matters or even in daily routines…. what form of employment, form of diet and clothing are permitted.

3. Elitism and Persecution – abusive churches depict themselves as unique in God’s plans and have a strong organizational tendency to be separate from other church bodies and institutions. The social dynamism of the group involves being independent or separate, with diminishing possibilities for internal correction and reflection. Outside criticism and evaluation is dismissed as the disruptive efforts of evil people seeking to hinder or thwart God’s plans.

4. Life-style and Experience – abusive churches foster rigidity in behaviour and in belief that requires unswerving conformity to the group’s ideals and social mores.

5. Dissent and Discipline – abusive churches tend to suppress any kind of internal challenges and dissent concerning decisions made by leaders. Acts of discipline may involve…

Upon learning that their group is a destructive cult some people are unable to muster the strength to leave. Others leave but soon return. The impact of leaving a high control group is dramatic, regularly leading to Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.

The period of exiting from a cult is usually a traumatic experience and, like any great change in a person’s life, involves passing through stages of accommodation to the change:

Disbelief/denial: “This can’t be happening. It couldn’t have been that bad.”
Anger/hostility: “How could they/I be so wrong?” (hate feelings)
Self-pity/depression: “Why me? I can’t do this.”
Fear/bargaining: “I don’t know if I can live without my group. Maybe I can still associate with it on a limited basis, if I do what they want.”
Reassessment: “Maybe I was wrong about the group’s being so wonderful.”
Accommodation/acceptance: “I can move beyond this experience and choose new directions for my life” or…
Reinvolvement: “I think I will rejoin the group.”
For those that do leave Michael Langone, Ph.D., of the American Family Foundation (AFF), lists symptoms suffered by up to 80% of former members of high control groups.11
Anxiety, fear, and worry
Feelings of anger toward the group leaders
Mental confusion
Vivid flashbacks to the group experience
Low self-confidence
Indecisiveness
Difficulty concentrating
Loneliness
Compulsive need to talk about the group
Despair, hopelessness, and helplessness
Difficulty thinking critically
Guilt about things done while in the group
Troubled by thoughts that can’t be gotten rid of
“Floating” among very different states of mind
Conflicts with loved ones & family
A longing to restore certain aspects of group
Sleeplessness
Nightmares
Difficulty finding suitable employment
Fear of physical harm by the group
Medical ills

DC “My life is far from a perfect life, but it is much more real than before the FoF. And through the school I am able to embrace my life, embrace the person I am, the person I am becoming.”

What does it mean that your life is much more real than before FOF? And what does it mean that you are able to embrace it through the school?

“And you have been quite vague about the nature of their suffering, saying only they are depressed, they are getting old, they would be inconvenienced by leaving, they fear losing their friends if they left, etc.”

There are so many stories here on the blog about the nature of people’s suffering. About people getting hurt, abused, getting old after being on salary their whole life, broke, sick with no insurance etc. What is vague about it?

DC “Many people in life suffer greatly. People in schools don’t get absolved from life’s sufferings. I personally know people in life who have suffered more than any students I know. To live means to suffer. ”

One does not have to suffer. This is a big part of the FOF brianwashing. People can heal and stop hurting, but FOF does not approve this attitude.

DC “It amazes me when people try to blame the FoF for life’s suffering.”

One can blame Fof for suffering if it is a cause of their suffering as one can blame a thief for stealing from them. Robert caused a lot of suffering to a lot of people.

DC “Since the sequence came to the forefront about 2 years ago most of the students who were not committed to the school have departed on their own. ”

This is very convenient to believe that those who left did so because they were not committed to the school or to the Work. But you don’t hear when people tell you why they left.

DC “The school has taught me to separate from my real suffering and to let go of much of my imaginary suffering.”

Did the school taught you how to stop your suffering or only how to separate from it? I guess not.

DC “You say you were close to Robert. So am I. He does not force anyone to do anything. He does not coerce. Persuasion is not coercion. Asking is not coercion. Suggesting is not coercion. People who act against their own nature fail to see that that may be the reason they are put into the situations they find themselves in – to actually for the first time come into contact with what their true convictions are and are not.”

You are wrong. He does force and coerce. You don’t want to know. You don’t want to believe.

DC “Don’t fall for the tricks of the lower self. None of the issues you bring up are on the same level as the issue of escaping from the wheel of misfortune of mechanical life.”

Did you just come from the meeting, DC? Do you believe that doing the sequence is going to help you to escape the mechanical life? Wake up, you are in the state of hypnoses!

I see D.C., so “Goldenfist” the young Russian student hand-picked, (excuse the pun) to repeatedly stick his fist in Robert’s anus for Robert’s sexual gratification only seemed to be coerced when in fact the problem was he is not unified?

You are making further erroneous assumptions that are just unintelligent as well as continuing to bundle up ex-members into representing convenient positions for you to counter. Let me take you up on a few points in your post.

“Schools are not for everyone. I do know that the FoF works for me. I am far from perfect and my life is far from a perfect life, but it is much more real than before the FoF”

You assume that esoteric schools exist. I have seen evidence of one in Sri Lanka and think that they probably do exist. However, the Fellowship of Friends is not an esoteric school in anything but tag line. Although most of us have regrets about what we have done, or more often left undone, in our lives, in general, people mature through life experiences and become wiser as their lives progress. The fact that you attribute your life being more real than before the FOF can only be taken objectively if you study the opportunity cost of the years you have spent there.
A member of any church would be able to make the statement you have with the same certainty. It in no way validates their membership of a church or cult, it purely shows them to lack the capacity to see things in a relative way.

“Since the sequence came to the forefront about 2 years ago most of the students who were not committed to the school have departed on their own. The door to leave is open to everyone just as the door to stay is open to all.”

Many committed students left – surely that is the point. How did they change from being committed students in the fabled ‘inner circle’ to being ex-members? Saying that those without sufficient valuation and commitment leave is nonsense; this is a low, if effective, means of intimidation and has been exposed several times on this blog previously.

“It’s a fact that some people do not do well in schools. I don’t know why Influence C brings some people into the school when it’s not their play to remain or connect with the best the school has to offer but it does happen. They must have something to work out in order to see what they have to see about themselves.”

Well, that fact is pretty safe, I suppose. Your inferences about C influence are however facile. Again, any number of ignoramuses who are committed to a cause or institution can say the same things.Your assumption that such a thing as C influence exists in as the feel-good, self indulgent way caricatured by Burton is absurd. If you step back and look at it, it is either mumbo jumbo or blasphemy.

“You say you were close to Robert. So am I. He does not force anyone to do anything. He does not coerce. Persuasion is not coercion. Asking is not coercion. Suggesting is not coercion. People who act against their own nature fail to see that that may be the reason they are put into the situations they find themselves in – to actually for the first time come into contact with what their true convictions are and are not.”

And

The school does not force anyone to do anything against their will – and that goes for conscious will or mechanical will. Whether we are aware of it or not we give our permission to all our actions. Whatever ruling faculty is in charge in that moment gives permission. But because we are not unified it often seems we are being coerced.”

Previously you agreed with what Walter T wrote, stating that a group calling themselves a school is essentially an authoritarian one where one is required to submit to the will of the leader and his policies. Where you say force, obviously no one is pointing a gun to members head; however the agreement people make on joining the FOF is a form of verbal contract and means they are willing to go against their will. They are making the decision to be governed by someone else and that persons system and the institution that has grown around them. Surely that is what joining a group that claims to be a school is all about.
The bait that we swallowed was that we could act against our own nature, and in doing so build a better nature by our actions that were governed by a more enlightened will. Your use of the idea of not being unified to explain why we feel we are being coerced is again, facile in the extreme.

I have previously stated that you are probably a mediocre shit and can now confirm my diagnosis. Yes, I can believe that you need a group claiming to be a school and – Yes, such groups are not for every one. I expect the FOF has and will continue to work for you in evading real responsibility and the need to be courageous in living your life like a man.
Miguel referred to you as daily “mosca cojonera” – in case you haven’t googled it, it means someone who is boring, persistent and annoying, all at the same time.

By the way, it would be interesting to read your considered explanation of ‘verification’. Don’t expect you have the balls for it though, despite your probably having given numerous ‘good angles’ on it in the past and maybe even having led a meeting or two on the subject.

This self-sacrificing will to give one’s personal labor and if necessary one’s own life for others is most strongly developed in the Aryan. The Aryan is not greatest in his mental qualities as such, but in the extent of his willingness to put all his abilities in the service of the community. In him the instinct of self-preservation has reached the noblest form, since he willingly subordinates his own ego to-the life of the community and, if the hour demands, even sacrifices it.
Not in his intellectual gifts lies the source of the Aryan’s capacity for creating and building culture. If he had just this alone, he could only act destructively, in no case could he organize; for the innermost essence of all organization requires that the individual renounce putting forward his personal opinion and interests and sacrifice both in favor of a larger group. Only byway of this general community does he again recover his share. Now, for example, he no longer works directly for himself, but with his activity articulates himself with the community, not only for his own advantage, but for the advantage of all. The most wonderful elucidation of this attitude is provided by his word ‘work,’ by which he does not mean an activity for maintaining life in itself, but exclusively a creative effort that does not conflict with the interests of the community.

“You say you were close to Robert. So am I. He does not force anyone to do anything. He does not coerce. Persuasion is not coercion. Asking is not coercion. Suggesting is not coercion. People who act against their own nature fail to see that that may be the reason they are put into the situations they find themselves in – to actually for the first time come into contact with what their true convictions are and are not.”

OREGON HOUSE, Calif. (ARK) — A long-time member of the Fellowship of Friends was detained Thursday for spray-painting and denting 444 cars owned by his fellow students, but he was later released and promoted to Teacher of the Fellowship of Friends (FOF).

The man received the promotion after several current members reported the incident to police and described him as “the most hated” person in the FOF.

“It was a shrewd move on his part,” said one observer. “For at least a few hours, he was disliked even more than Burton — and that’s all it took. A spiritual teacher must attract strong negative energy from his students to be a real teacher, because matter opposes spirit in the quest to awaken. Burton has been too likable recently, cracking corny jokes during his dinners and so forth, and getting people to laugh. Not good. People forget unfortunately.”

“No activities Robert has engaged in are off limits in the realm of consciousness.”

She describes their deep friendship and his emotional and physical pain as Burton brutalized him, how he lay groaning on the floor of the Blake Cottage for hours after a session with him. This went on for years. She had first–hand knowledge, her job was to clean the Blake Cottage around the comings and goings of Burton, —and to clean the soiled underwear. She recalls the perfuming of Burton and the air around to cover the sordid smells.

DC has been taking you for a ride for so long and you are still enjoying it…

What is written about the Law of Octaves in the “Search of the Miraculous” seems to be quite accurate. One deviates from the original course just a little bit each time, and at a certain point one starts turning backwards to the opposite direction.

DC has managed to successfully snitch out of many of you exactly what he legally wanted. There is plenty of written matter DC has extracted from you in order to support a potential lawsuit against this Blog for deliberate intentions to destroy the FOF and violate its member’s Rights.

Here is what you or Girard, it doesn’t matter, you’re all alike, writes about CRIME:

The process, also called disease and rebellion, in which ‘form’ is the first force: ‘life’ is the second force; and ‘matter’ is the third force. It can be seen when something (a part of a whole, a virus) places its own interest above those of something which is objectively higher (the whole, a man) and so damages or destroys both itself and the higher on which it depended, thus rendering it lifeless ‘matter’. An example occurs in the WORK when false personality (an imaginary picture, or form) so stifles essence that essence ceases to grow.

It beautifully describes how the Fellowship reduced life in it to alchemy and programmed behaviour dictated by Robert FORM destroying the development of the members and culture or creativity LIFE and reducing it to a money-making Cult with a lot of retrograde students. MATTER. It is seen in the fact that Robert and his enablers placed their own interest above those of the System destroying both them selves and the higher on which they depended rendering it lifeless matter. The essence of members as much as that of the Fellowship ceased to grow and stifled in corruption, decadence and frigidity.

How do you think that knowing the theory so well you actually managed to become so corrupted? Was it that money and power were too tempting for you? Dominating others? Or were you just unable to control your feature of destruction? And Robert his feature of greed?

“DC has managed to successfully snitch out of many of you exactly what he legally wanted. There is plenty of written matter DC has extracted from you in order to support a potential lawsuit against this Blog for deliberate intentions to destroy the FOF and violate its member’s Rights.”

Give me a break. Either you’re not an American familiar with what is and what isn’t, or you’re a moron. Take your pick.

In the maturity of mankind, each human being can bring forth the Spirit from within himself, herself. Each can hold to the truth and stand up for it without following or obeying another. A mature human being trusts his own integrity and obeys it. A man does not need of Gods or authorities outside of him or herself to be a man for a true man cannot act against his own self. God lives within each man and woman, it is his and her own spirit, it is his and her own self. Freedom from false authority, freedom from submission, freedom from anyone pretending to be more than one’s self so that each of our selves can develop fully and flower as human beings. Freedom to love, freedom to trust, freedom to dignity.

A chap with an egosyntonic belief in a personal relationship with god is pretty mundane – you find them under every other mossy rock. However, marry it to a narcissistic personality disorder and you get an unpleasant sort of creature, both slimy and hard shelled at the same time.

I was on the trip like most, one way ticket paid in full. The gods were directing my play and Burton was the conduit between this and the angelic world, blah, blah, blah… I know where you are coming from and up to a point it was entirely understandable and evoked sympathy as well as challenge. However, you are regressing further under that rock and not nearly as cute.
If someone said that Burton and the FOFs caricature of what was called C influence is boring, persistent and annoying I would get where they are coming from. For me it wasn’t particularly annoying, just boring and persistent.
One thing that I can assure you of is that my feelings towards you and anything intelligent, be it celestial or terrestrial cannot possibly be the same.

Opus – “I know you do not like personal questions so I will rephrase mine: Will a good/fast student do anything against the will of C-Influence, or go against what C-Influence has arranged for him/her?”

“A man meets his fate on the road he took trying to avoid it.”

We all serve Influence C; some willingly/knowingly and others must be dragged along unwittingly. A more conscious man knows the play is written and thinks mostly of maintaining his inner equilibrium, his inner state, as he serves. To answer your question directly – it is not possible for mortals to go against the will of gods, at least that is my conclusion/deduction. The universe seems to be founded on Order. And for men to go against gods order would first have to be overcome by chaos.

The whole issue is in our readiness to serve.

Men are used for different purposes though, and it appears the purpose has something to do with their being.

Regarding the blog; I or anyone else can write or not write according to our fate; it doesn’t matter from one angle. The blog’s last comment has already been decided; we just can’t read it yet because it has not been physically composed, or even “thought of”.

“This blog is a graffiti wall. I know of no occasion on which a graffiti wall was successfully sued and had to pay damages.”

That might be true but a graffiti wall can be brought into court as evidence. If there was ever a suit filed by ex-members or the FoF in some way related to something said on the blog the content can be called as evidence. It also means that the authors of the posts can also be deposed, subpoenaed to appear, etc. We might find ourselves one day sitting side by side in the pew, with Bruce shooting spitballs at me from the back row.

“What is written about the Law of Octaves in the “Search of the Miraculous” seems to be quite accurate. One deviates from the original course just a little bit each time, and at a certain point one starts turning backwards to the opposite direction.

DC has managed to successfully snitch out of many of you exactly what he legally wanted. There is plenty of written matter DC has extracted from you in order to support a potential lawsuit against this Blog for deliberate intentions to destroy the FOF and violate its member’s Rights.”

Huh? One of the intentions of the blog is to expose the Fellowship of Friends as a high intensity mind control cult and a fraud. It began that way and has continued right on track.
DC has done nothing other than to advance that exposure with his mind numbing, heart curdling insanity.

I suggest you take a look at the mirror every once in a while.
You will find out that you have already picked your choice as a moron.

You don’t get it do you? This Blog is almost the sole generator of a potential legal complaint against the FOF in one form or another and as such it contains a huge amount of deliberate literal expressions calling to destroy the FOF. A great deal of these expressions were quite sophisticatedly evoked by DC in the past few months. Legal actions, once taken, are not unilateral and people like you are supplying the FOF with free ammunition.

The FOF has sufficient evidences to at least prove sheer slander evoked in the Blog and it won’t be so difficult to prove damage as a result.

But, what the heck, as a moron you are not supposed to grasp all this.

55. Jomo Piñata

“This blog is a graffiti wall. I know of no occasion on which a graffiti wall was successfully sued and had to pay damages.”

Graffiti walls are no different from any other form of publication if one can prove the identity and the intentions of those who wrote on the wall.

“This blog is a graffiti wall. I know of no occasion on which a graffiti wall was successfully sued and had to pay damages.”

That might be true but a graffiti wall can be brought into court as evidence. If there was ever a suit filed by ex-members or the FoF in some way related to something said on the blog the content can be called as evidence. It also means that the authors of the posts can also be deposed, subpoenaed to appear, etc. We might find ourselves one day sitting side by side in the pew, with Bruce shooting spitballs at me from the back row.

——————————————————-

AND HERE WE ARE AGAIN!

IMPLICIT and CONTINUOUS THREATS and SECRECY!

DAILY CARDIACS WEAPONS or should I say bland WAFFELS?

Dear FOF-STUDENTS is THAT THE COCKTAIL YOU NEED?

DO YOU NEED that deprivation of the right of decision-making, REALLY?

YOU WILL BE EXPLOITED, INTELLECTUALLY, PHYSICALLY…….

THE FOF ORGANIZATION HAS NO POWER TO STOP THE BLOG AND ITS EVERLASTING WARNINGS!

Quoting DC:
“…Regarding the blog; I or anyone else can write or not write according to our fate; it doesn’t matter from one angle. The blog’s last comment has already been decided; we just can’t read it yet because it has not been physically composed, or even “thought of”…”

Profound. Do you share the same copywriter as RB, or is the statement pure inspiration from Influence C?

NEW YORK (ARK) — The Rest of the World has threatened to launch a class-action lawsuit against the Fellowship of Friends (FOF).

“As such, the FOF contains a huge amount of deliberate expressions supporting the destruction of the rest of the world,” a Rest of the World representative said Friday. “For example, on numerous occasions during the past three decades, Robert Burton has predicted large cataclysmic earthquakes and the end of the World. They obviously have a single-minded agenda here.”

A few observers wonder why The Rest of the World — if they’re serious about a suit — won’t simply launch it, as opposed to conducting a propaganda campaign of fear and intimidation.

“It makes me wonder if I shouldn’t leave the Rest of the World,” one Rest of the World member said Friday. “It’s a bit creepy. But I’m getting what I came for.”

“The goal is to water things down,” Fraudiac said. “If someone writes something that effectively exposes the FOF, whether it’s a story about a former member who has committed suicide or an apt comparison to the agendas and attitudes of the Nazis, our goal is to divert the discussion to other topics — the Fourth Way, the definition of verification, and so on. We can’t prevent people from posting, but we sure can try to water the blog down.”

Fraudiac launched a spam campaign over a year ago that had the same intended effect at first — water down the blog so that the most interesting posts were hard to find — but the blog quickly came up with an effective system to avoid the spam.

“I don’t think the water-down-the-blog strategy is working so well,” said one blogger, whose name has been held upon request. “Fraudiac seems to inspire even better and more thoughtful commentary, that’s all.”

For all FOF-Members, Students: THE FELLOWSHIP OF FRIENDS DISCUSSION BLOG IS NOT
THE ONLY PRESENCE SHOWING SOURCES AGAINST THE DAILY MISUSE
OF FOF-STUDENTS:

This is a link to the BLOG/archive of the Human rights advocate Perry Bulwer, Canada.
(AN ARCHIVE OF NEWS ITEMS RELATED TO CHILD ABUSE OR NEGLECT, OR INFRINGEMENT OF CHILDREN’S RIGHTS, IN A RELIGIOUS CONTEXT.
Copyrighted materials appearing on this blog are provided solely for the Fair Use purposes of research and education)

You will find in his archive the article of Ryan McCarthy in the Appeal-Democrat, California:

You are wasting your time because the tempting offer of the FOF was revealed to be a trap!
EVERY TRICKSTER DELUDES HIMSELF!
(That’s for the persons on the “Rent-a-Forth-Way” without seriousness and responsibility)

I think Someone is afraid. It looks to me as if communicating that fear, a fear I don’t think is warranted, made him look like an intentional spreader of fear to Cussin’ Broocie, who then went for the jugular.

jomo, i don’t know if “someone” is still “in” our “out” based on anything they’ve written so far, but the following paragraph reads like an indoctrinated member to me, not someone who left three years ago. on the other hand, if he/she did leave three years ago, it illustrates how cult indoctrination can linger for years:

someone wrote: “DC has managed to successfully snitch out of many of you exactly what he legally wanted. There is plenty of written matter DC has extracted from you in order to support a potential lawsuit against this Blog for deliberate intentions to destroy the FOF and violate its member’s Rights.”

also, i didn’t here “someone” or anyone answer your question:

jomo wrote: “Is there some reason why you believe it’s anything other than perfectly legal to publicly advocate for the destruction of a California nonprofit religious corporation?”

this is a great question, but he quickly ignored it by insulting one of the bloggers, etc. — which is the MO of dc and other cult apologists on the blog — ignore important questions, and distract us.

so i’ll repeat the question… what is the legal basis for suing someone because they want to expose abusive behavior in a religious cult? i’ve been hearing this for years from goldman and so forth. it’s a bit like saying if you’re a religion, you can do whatever the hell you want, because if anyone tries to stop you they’re violating your rights or some other such nonsense. it’s a rhetorical question, but are there any takers out there?

For all FOF-Members, Students: THE FELLOWSHIP OF FRIENDS DISCUSSION BLOG IS NOT
THE ONLY PRESENCE SHOWING SOURCES AGAINST THE DAILY MISUSE
OF FOF-STUDENTS:

This is a link to the BLOG/archive of the Human rights advocate Perry Bulwer, Canada.
(AN ARCHIVE OF NEWS ITEMS RELATED TO CHILD ABUSE OR NEGLECT, OR INFRINGEMENT OF CHILDREN’S RIGHTS, IN A RELIGIOUS CONTEXT.
Copyrighted materials appearing on this blog are provided solely for the Fair Use purposes of research and education)

You will find in his archive the article of Ryan McCarthy in the Appeal-Democrat, California:

You are wasting your time because the tempting offer of the FOF was revealed to be a trap!
EVERY TRICKSTER DELUDES HIMSELF!
(That’s for the persons on the “Rent-a-Forth-Way” without seriousness and responsibility)

You remember I got on to info@justanswer.com, to find a legal answer to what was possible for ex-member blogsite posters who have been advocating the demise of the FOF? The lawyer who dealt with my question advised setting up a ‘defense fund’ for when the FOF would probably (and looks like, now!) threaten legal action in terms of defamation by us on the blog concerning their organisation. My guess is that the FOF is losing credibility among current members at a rate that is also causing alarming numbers leaving. NOW THINK! IS THIS ‘TRUTH’ AGAINST ‘THE TRUTH’? And who will win a Pyrrhic Victory, or likely to? You will have to scroll back to section 61 I think, to find the legal answer…..Nigel.

Someone, any silly mistake is taken too seriously here. I apologize for the short patience of this blog. You’re welcome but Bruce is by far not the ugliest poster here no matter how much he loves swearing. I’m offended with your words! If you insult him it doesn’t feel good to me. Would you please stop? Not that he needs defending but it feels good to express it.

You say you were close to Robert. So am I.He does not force anyone to do anything. He does not coerce. Persuasion is not coercion. Asking is not coercion. Suggesting is not coercion. People who act against their own nature fail to see that that may be the reason they are put into the situations they find themselves in – to actually for the first time come into contact with what their true convictions are and are not.

And then a while later

We all serve Influence C; some willingly/knowingly and others must be dragged along unwittingly… To answer your question directly – it is not possible for mortals to go against the will of gods, at least that is my conclusion/deduction.

DC, you see Dear, the reason behind my question is pretty obvious. As you know, when a young male student finds himself in the rabbit hole, about to be swallowed up by the master himself, he is told (by most available accounts): “This was all arranged by C-Influence, it is the will of the Gods to have this (sex) take place.” Should the little frightened bunny hesitate, he is told: “It is bad to undermine the will of one’s teacher and go against the Gods”. And more often than not, the victim is gobbled up and added to the long list of “willing” sex partners.

Most of us contend that those 2 statements of yours cannot both be true, and that Robert Burton abuses his position of spiritual leader to take advantage of his disciples. In other words as a disciple, you accept, he wins, you refuse, you lose, by compromising your status as school material and chance for evolution.

The view that you have implied from taking the excerpt from the 4th way presented by Walter T. rather literally may be that, of course, members who are asked by Robert to have sex, or fist him, should be ‘deeply’ honored and fervently accept the offer. After all, they are nothing, they have no will, no freedom of choice, no future except as compost for the moon (growing up in communist Russia, one may actually believe that). They cannot doubt that being chosen by Robert is a privilege, a fast connection to C-Influence and a chance for accelerated evolution (aside from all the added perks: status, gold chains, clothes, travel, and cash).

If a spiritual leader asking for sex under the guise that it is the will of the Gods, which he claims preside over the disciples’ life and spiritual welfare, is not coercion, what is?

Regarding the idea that Robert never forces anyone to do anything, here’s a true story.

During the prediction period of 1998 no one was allowed to make a left on Marysville Rd! You could only make a right. If you didn’t comply you were fined. “Students” that didn’t move out of Los Angeles and San Francisco were either fined or expelled. The only place you were allowed to go was Nevada City via the “back way”. If you needed to travel by air, which I was REQUIRED to do, you had to fly out of Reno. I drove to Reno on one occasion and suddenly found myself in a white-out; snow so thick that you couldn’t even see where the shoulder was to pull over. It was one of the most harrowing experiences of my life. I was forced, not asked to do these things.

Dr. Ronald M. Enroth:: “Leaving a restricted and abusive community involves what sociologists call the de-socialization process whereby the individual loses identification with the past group and moves toward re-socialization, or reintegration into the mainstream culture. There are a number of emotions and needs that emerge during this transition process. How one deals with these feelings and affective experiences has a significant impact on the overall healing that is required.

Many have described the aftermath of abusive-church involvement as comparable to that of rape victims, or the delayed stress syndrome experienced by war veterans. It is recovery from what might be called SPIRITUAL RAPE. You feel like something has been lost and you will never be the same again.”

I just think the Fellowship can legitimately claim to be in the Gurdjieff tradition, that’s all. It is in the “heterodox” wing, descended through Ouspensky, and further I wouldn’t have any problem with always calling this wing the “Gurdjeiff-Ouspensky tradition,” if the orthodox Gurdjieffians would find that more acceptable. (Of course the Fellowship as currently going isn’t Gurdjieffian at all, but I’m talking about the training I received 1992-99)

Gurdjieff was an authoritarian guru, Ouspensky too, Robert likewise. I don’t see how that helps Robert or the Fellowship. From one level, the works of G. & O. are an instruction book on how to be an authoritarian guru. I only gave eight or so references, there we’re easily twice as many. Do the same I did, get the PDF of In Search and search through for “teacher” and “submit.” I just can’t see how you can say “Gurdjieff wasn’t really saying that you should give up your will to the teacher.”
_________________________________

Crouching Tiger says: “There are simply a group of senior students who have spent a lifetime in the work, and their advice is worth hearing for someone interested in it.”

That’s what I found in the Fellowship during my time there, and profited from it.

Let me talk today about a G. I knew, about 12+ years in the FoF when I met her, and she had done some intense work in New York theater, which you may know was heavily influenced by human potential movements like Gestalt and Encounter Therapy and existential philosophy. Where do you think R. Taylor got his gravitas?! Anyway, she directed The Twelfth Night and I did more work on imaginary picture and vanity training for that role than in any other circumstance. I came out of the experience a changed man and understood then that transformation was the point of “work on oneself”, “higher states,” like those that one can experience on the stage, are only a tool that may help in the process.

Now sitting atop all this creativity and breakthrough was Robert Burton, leeching financially, sexually and probably energetically off it. By all means the organization you belong to sounds healthier than the Fellowship ever was. Current FoFers, for whatever reason, don’t realize they can do everything they are doing now without Robert. When they do realize it, they leave.

_________________

Hey DC:

If you’re going to accept Influence C you gotta’ accept it “whole hog with postage”… that means there are no “slips” or “errors,” only messages from the Gods!

As far as the legal stuff goes, bring it on. I’ve already given one deposition against the FoF (in the case of a friend and ex-member who wanted full custody of her child, the husband still being in the school, before the 2006 predictions). I stand behind it and everything else I’ve said on this blog.

104. Walter J. Tanner – January 9, 2009
I just can’t see how you can say “Gurdjieff wasn’t really saying that you should give up your will to the teacher.”

Hi Walter,

No, I cannot say that, you misunderstood me. It is in the workbooks like a hundred other things that Robert picked up and misused from the System to develop a Cult and not a School. That is basically the point I’m trying to make. But fortunately, they’ve been so sloppy that it is not difficult to prove how much they’ve distorted the essence of the System. So much that they had to end up saying it wasn’t the Fourth Way any more! That rape, extortion, manipulation, fraud and all the other predilect activities of the Fellowship of Friends Cult are the second to Christ, Mr. Robert Burton’s creations. I wonder how they are going to defend that when they have to.

Bruce, I’m glad it doesn’t bother you but yes, it bothers me and I was happy to express it.

Walter Tanner:
“I just think the Fellowship can legitimately claim to be in the Gurdjieff tradition, that’s all.”

“That’s what I found in the Fellowship during my time there, and profited from it.”
_____________________

People also believed they profited from the experience of German authoritarianism during the Nazi era. They worked hard, developed discipline, learned a lot about human nature, believed they gained a sincere appreciation for giving up their personal interests for the good of the whole, and so forth.

“Sitting atop all of this creativity and breakthrough” was Adolph Hitler.

There’s a hole in your resume — as there is for me, as there is for the rest of us. It’s called the Fellowship of Friends. We reported to none other than Robert Burton. We met no one with “gravitas.” We gained nothing but an imaginary sense of superiority over the whole earth.

Alleged transcript of an interview with Mr. X, of Oregon House, CA relating to his job description in the Fellowship of Friends.

Attorney for the Rest of the World
“You receive a salary of $ 600 per month along with free board (fixed menu) and lodging (shared room with 3 other colleagues), use of a Mercedes, Miata and Lexus, regular international travel, 4 cashmere Fair-Isle pullovers in ugly colors per month, dry cleaning of your trousers every day, a heavy gold necklace and pair of pink spats to wear on special occasions – is that correct.”

“Yes”

Attorney for the Rest of the World
“What is your job description?”

“I’m a rectum stretcher”

Attorney for the Rest of the World
“Please explain what your job entails”

“I start with a couple of fingers, and then use a ‘silent duck’. After a few minutes of moving my hand backwards and forwards, I put in the other hand using the ‘bellows technique’. I then pull my hands apart slowly until I can get a foot in there, Once I have one foot in there, I pull on the other side of the rectum with my hands and start pushing down with my foot until the rectum is 6 feet across.”

Attorney for the Rest of the World
“And what do you do with a 6 foot asshole”

“You dress him up in a tailored pink silk suit with $200,000 worth of grave-robbed jewelry, sit him down in the front of a bunch of delusional devotees who believe his is second only to Christ and all share a ‘religious experience’.

We are getting such top-of-the-line satire from FOFion and others that it’s a shame the audience is just us (who else could possible understand the idiocy this humor is based on?) Too bad–this is really world class stuff.

I think that being creative is opposed to being mechanical and not some “state”.
How can you be creative if you are following the footsteps of someone else or going through the same routine every week – the same angles at the meeting on Wednesday and Sunday, the same food on the Reception on Friday or Pottage on Saturday. Don’t you get bored beyond belief?

“We are getting such top-of-the-line satire from FOFion and others that it’s a shame the audience is just us (who else could possible understand the idiocy this humor is based on?) Too bad–this is really world class stuff.”

Would you expect less from the escapees of a cult run by a top-of-the-line, world class satyrist?

What I find interesting about the following article is that the emotional manipulation that a parent does to a child to turn her against the other parent is a faithful parallel of the manipulation cults do to members to separate them from their families and the world at large. The effects are the same!

Those of us who are immersed in the cult field often find that our work has been marginalized by mental health professionals who see us as treating a population that has little to do with the problems they are addressing in their clinical practices. Over the years, I believe we have been able to bridge this gap with those who work with other trauma survivors. Now Dr. Baker has brought some of our cult-related insights into another field—family environments in which children need to maintain total loyalty to one parent at the cost of a relationship with the other parent. This is a family problem that occurs on a continuum of influence, from such behaviors as mild bad-mouthing of the other parent to using an array of strategies that might result in a case of Parental Alienation Syndrome (PAS), which happens in the most extreme cases.
We acknowledge the power of suggestion and influence on both children and adults. In the past, those of us who work with cult survivors immediately “got” the concept that poorly trained therapists could successfully suggest to their patients that they might “recover” memories of child abuse of which they previously had been unaware. Likewise, in contrast to some therapists who become seduced or manipulated by parents who present them with children who might totally reject and hate one parent without giving them specifics (particularly specifics of abuse or neglect), therapists who have worked in the cult area can be skeptical, request further information, and wonder whether PAS is at work. We also wonder about the possibility of some form of parental alienation when an adult enters therapy with a black-and-white version of his parents.

Elena: #Now Dr. Baker has brought some of our cult-related insights into another field—family environments in which children need to maintain total loyalty to one parent at the cost of a relationship with the other parent”

For most of my child’s growing years I made sure to involve my child with his father (still a Fellowship member). When all three of us were together I never would mention the Fellowship, understanding that honoring my child’s relationship with his father was more important than discussing my opinions about the Fellowship. And I know my son, who is now entering his twenties soon who has both a healthy relationship with me and his father is thankful I did that.

What is amazing about finding so much material is realizing that so many people know what is going on and no one helped us all those years. And then the fact that Cults continue unchecked and perfectly legal makes me wonder what Cult are we in now that we are out?

Cults in Our Midst is up-to-date with its concluding note on the Order of the Solar Temple, a European-based group notable for the shocking deaths of 53 of its members in Canada and Switzerland: “We hope that such occurrences do not happen, but if they do, let us not call these deaths ‘suicides.’ Let’s view them for what they are: the sad, lonely, dreadful ending of life for people who trusted too much, followed too long, and could not get away from a self-serving and murderous leader.”

Once the promise is recognized as empty, believers—even the most loyal—tend to stray. Often, this exodus is aided by revelations of corruption, leadership abuses, financial mismanagement, and duplicitous behavior (chap. 7). This is not a new story by any means, but Jenkins’s lively descriptions and artful analyses allow us better to understand true believers and the dilemma of living under the burden of too many contradictions (which boil down to individualism vs. submission to authority).

The concept that keeps members bound to the group and unable to question its teachings is “the belief that the Watchtower Society is God’s organization,” chosen by God and Jesus as the only vessel of Truth. This false concept (Cameron provides much evidence debunking it) provides the rationale for accepting its doctrine and even its self-admitted errors. As Cameron puts it:
Belief in this concept has given the men of the Governing Body tremendous control over the thinking of the rest of Jehovah’s Witnesses. To question them, to doubt them, to disagree with them becomes the same as questioning, doubting and disagreeing with God himself! (p. 14)

The subtitle of this outstanding book says it all: “Freedom and Recovery from Cults and Abusive Relationships.” The purpose of the book is to aid the recovery process of former cult members. While doing so, the authors inform and educate family and friends of former cult members and helping professionals. For individuals who have been out of a cult for several years, this book is an affirmation of their own experiences and a measuring stick to see how far they have progressed.
In a 1988 Cultic Studies Journal review of Ronald Enroth’s book The Lure of the Cults and New Religions, Fr. Walter Debold stated, with much insight, that “it would seem that there is a great deal that could be learned if we were able to monitor more effectively the recovery of ex-cultists. And we might minimize their anguish if we had a better understanding of their sufferings.” Captive Hearts, Captive Minds goes a long way to help people to understand the suffering, struggles, triumphs, and joys of the recovery process.http://icsahome.com/infoserv_bookreviews/bkrev_captivehearts.htm

Daily Cardiac, You still haven’t answered most of the questions I’ve asked you, especially these ones. Where are you hiding you sick pimp, aren’t you yet ready to come out and tell me how the Fellowship is not coercive you sick sadists?

For how much longer are you going to keep raping people Girard Haven, Guinever, Steven D. Meredith D., Rowena T. Robert T. Keving B. Elizabeth and a hundred more of you, when I find the phone book I’ll write out all your names. Keep coming in here you criminal and I’ll give out each of your names and tell you about yourselves and what I saw of each one of you when I was in the Fellowship. I will do that any way if you don’t start closing down that Cult where you’ve been hurting people for over thirty five years. Every day I learn more about how you do it and did it and I am so angry and so sick of knowing you are still free when you should all be in a clinic for mentally damaged people who hurt and hurt others every day, event after event, stripping people away from their money who come from other countries in their innocence hoping for a conscious being and people to help them.

Where are you hiding Daily Cardiac? Did you weak little balls have to rest today from the coolness with which you come and talk here about how the Fellowship works for you? How much you’ve learnt and how good you feel to be in it? I swear to you, I’ll expose each one of you one by one in a way you’ve never even seen your selves if you dare come here again with your coolness about what is going on here and in the Fellowship.

36. elena – January 8, 2009
18. Daily Cardiac – January 8, 2009

I don’t use anyone to justify my choices; I make them based on my own life experiences. Everyone is responsible for their own choices.

_____No, you’re lying to yourself. You are responsible for the suffering of thousands of members. You personally are responsible and you are trying to convince yourself that you are not.

Schools are not for everyone.
________You’re not in a School, you’re in a Cult

I do know that the FoF works for me.
_________That’s not the real you talking, just a puppet at the service of a criminal organisation that probably pays your salary.

I am far from perfect and my life is far from a perfect life, but it is much more real than before the FoF.
______What was your life like before the Fellowship that you think raping, extorsioning, manipulating and hurting others is better?

And through the school I am able to embrace my life, embrace the person I am, the person I am becoming.

_________What is worth embracing about hurting others?

I know many others who feel the same way as I do.

_________Have they hurt as many people as you have?

The people you describe for the most part must have avoided me or not shown their troubles to me as I honestly have not encountered them other than isolated cases.

_______Have you been open to them or do you look at your watch and tell them you don’t have time and when they start questioning you, do you get angry and tell them to leave the School if that is what they want? That they are free to leave? That no one is holding them back after they’ve paid thirty years?

And you have been quite vague about the nature of their suffering, saying only they are depressed, they are getting old, they would be inconvenienced by leaving, they fear losing their friends if they left,etc.

__________There is nothing vague about people’s suffering on the blog except the fact that they are so damaged by the Fellowship that they cannot even stand up to their own name and act decisively against the Fellowship. That doesn’t justify your or the Fellowship’s actions though.

Many people in life suffer greatly.

________You do not have a right to replace real suffering with the unnecessary suffering the Fellowship imposes on people, which eventually becomes real suffering.

It amazes me when people try to blame the FoF for life’s suffering.

______I’m equally amazed when you try to justify the suffering the FOF imposes on members as life suffering.

Since the sequence came to the forefront about 2 years ago most of the students who were not committed to the school have departed on their own. The door to leave is open to everyone just as the door to stay is open to all.

_________Why do you need to lie so cheaply to yourself? The sequence had nothing to do with it, it’s the blog what has helped and will continue to help people step out. The sequence is just another idiotic artifice to deceive members about the Work they are doing.

I don’t like to hear about anyone suffering but suffering is a part of life. It cannot be avoided. The school has taught me to separate from my real suffering and to let go of much of my imaginary suffering. I cannot undo the suffering of any of the people you describe. Neither can you. They must bear whatever was allotted by Influence C and do their best not to attract undue suffering through their own actions and decisions.

_________Why do you justify the suffering Robert and the Fellowship imposes on its members as if it were from divine beings like any other cheap catholic priest? How much cheaper can you get with your doctrine? Is that the kind of bullshit you heard as a child and have not been able to overcome it?

Photo caption and credit:
Winston Blackmore, the religious leader of the controversial polygamous community of Bountiful located near Creston, British Columbia, Canada, shares a laugh with six of his daughters and some of his grandchildren.
Jonathan Hayward / The Canadian Press / AP

The farming community of Lister is located in a picturesque valley hard on the U.S. border in southeastern British Columbia, Canada, in the shade of the Skimmerhorn Mountains. It lies roughly between Calgary and Spokane (the closest big town is Creston — pop. about 4,800). Founded by World War I veterans, Lister was always conspicuous for the dark secrets of many of its inhabitants. In the beginning of course, these secrets were the simple memories of the horrors of war. But recent generations have struggled with more complex secrets centered on a farming settlement in a corner of Lister known as Bountiful — and paralleling the events that unfolded in Eldorado, Texas in April 2008.

Made up of as many as 1,000 adherents of a fundamentalist Mormon sect, Bountiful has been home to clans of polygamists since the arrival in the late 1940s of the homestead’s founder Harold Blackmore, who — according to one account — was drawn to the valley after envisioning it in a dream. Blackmore was part of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, which was expelled from mainstream Mormonism in the 1930s. For generations, local farmers co-existed with the polygamists of Bountiful. But this relationship, based on the country tenet of “live and let live,” grew increasingly uneasy over time as strange stories of life within the settlement leaked out, and found their way into the media with accounts of a power struggle between Winston Blackmore, the sect’s leader in Bountiful, and Warren Jeffs, the leader of the FLDS Church. Jeffs, now incarcerated in the U.S. for being an accomplice to rape, is facing charges in the aftermath of the raid on the polygamist Yearning for Zion Ranch in Eldorado. (See pictures of two polygamist families.)

On Jan. 7, British Columbia Attorney-General Wally Oppal ended speculation that the government intended to co-exist with Bountiful by ordering the arrest of settlement spiritual leaders Blackmore, 52, and James Oler, 44, under charges of polygamy. According to press accounts, Blackmore is alleged to have as many as 26 wives and 108 children. (According to tradition, the first wife is listed as a legal marriage, and the others are “celestial wives” recognized by their faith.) The upcoming trial will test polygamy laws in the face of the Canadian Charter of Rights, and its broad protection of the exercise of religion. But more than anything, the trial will test the mettle of a community that has wrestled with the thorny issue of Bountiful for over 60 years. “It’s not a simple issue,” admits Andy Alfoldy, 67, a local artist and curator of the Alfoldy Gallery who has lived in the area since 1974.

To the outside world, Bountiful may seem to be a titillating sect, a real-life version of the HBO series Big Love. But to many locals, “the Blackmores” are simply folks with whom they’ve lived, worked, and done business for as long as anyone can remember. “I think you have a smaller subsection of the community that is really offended by this notion of polygamy,” says Lorne Eckersley, 54, publisher of the newspaper The Advance, based in the nearby town of Creston. “But I think in the broader community, they are just our neighbors, and the attitude has been ‘we don’t always agree with them, but they are people.'”

The leaders of Bountiful insist that reason for their arrests is not their wives, but their faith. “This is not about polygamy,” declared Winston Blackmore in a press statement on Thursday after he and Oler had been conditionally released from jail. “Tens of thousands of polygamists among many different cultures are hiding in plain sight all across Canada. They are known by their neighbors, policemen, legislators and media just as we are. … But they are not fundamentalist Mormons. To us this is about religious persecution.”

But to others, the issue is neither polygamy nor religion but simple sexual abuse. According to Dave Perrin, 60, a local veterinarian and author of the book Keep Sweet, which chronicles the life of former Bountiful “celestial wife” Debbie Palmer, polygamy as it is practiced at Bountiful can and has encouraged unions involving underage girls. Perrin says that in researching Keep Sweet, he unearthed allegations of sexual abuse of minors, which he argues should be the foundation of the government’s case against Bountiful’s leaders (as it was in the successful prosecution of Jeffs in the U.S., after the prosecutors decided to eschew polygamy charges.) “There has been a lot of water under the bridge, and a lot of lives ruined,” Perrin told TIME of the government’s inability to deal conclusively with Bountiful.

According to Eckersley, the prosecution may have opted to press the charge of polygamy because it is the most winnable strategy. Analysts contend that in the absence of plaintiffs or cooperative witnesses, charges of sexual abuse are unlikely to stick. But Eckersley is no more hopeful at the prospects of a successful polygamy prosecution, saying “there is a strong sense in the legal community this law won’t stand up in court.” What is certain, the case is likely to languish in the legal system for years, allowing Bountiful and its way of life to live on.

For Bountiful’s defenders, this reality is a blessing from an approving God. But for critics who see this way of life as a mill of sexual abuse, it is a tragedy of Biblical proportions.

That’s because you are not conscious enough. I’m so conscious I can hone in on the emotional part of the intellectual part of the emotional part of the intellectual part of the emotional part of the intellectual part of the emotional part of the Queen of the King of Hearts.
I can FEEL a butterfly fart in Thailand.
Influence C comes through so clear the technical team from the Bose corp. are beating down my door.
They are telling me to let you know you are a brainwashed retard spaz parroting your schiz-jizzwad leader. AUWWWWK

I am also surprised about seeing the information about Cults. Again, I have to let you all know about the book “The Guru Papers.” It is an incredible study.

Where was I all those years? I was in a Cult. This is the plain truth.

One is only ready when one is ready to step out of the prison he/she has created in collaboration with a restricted environment.

If one does not gather their strength to face their fears and re-think why one is in such a situation, they will never escape. And to use “work language.” If one keeps on being in “imagination” about ones personal powers, about their leader’s “level of being” and about one’s relationship with the “Gods”, one will keep on being “identified” with the Fellowship of Friends as being THE ONLY solution and the only place on earth one can evolve as a human being.

If one does not have the guts to step for a month or two aside, watch what is happening as an “interested stranger”, one will not experience the contradictions. If you cannot be in silence and in a quiet place, far from the maddening and busy crowd Robert has created to buffer his own inability to be alone, you will not experience your own divine connection with “higher forces”, “God”, “C Influence”, etc…

Subject of a meeting at Apollo the other day:@ Standing Upon the Shoulders of Ouspensky, Horn, Gurdjief, Collin……….@

Oh yes, I changed the order so it will not be copyright material, I also added @ in the place of inverted commas. I am trembling, will they catch me? Will I receive a phone call from the present president of the FOF, telling me I will have to choose between @ and “…”, and then what shall I say? Will my directors photograph me and will I finally receive a fine for my inappropriate behaviour?

Fear CULTure of the Fellowship of Friends, where are the kind, enlightened being you were supposed to become?

I have a Blog where I write and publish my own stuff. I can close it down any moment and disappear into thin air.

Daily Cardiac isn’t able to answer this question!
I don’t know if he is an instructor or a teacher in the FOF but he has spent so many years in the FOF-Institution that it is astonishing that he cannot (or he is forbidden to?) answer and give the BLOG a qualified definition of HAPPINESS?

The classical notion of happiness (or eudaimonia in Greek), was “a life well lived, a life of virtue and character, a life that manifests wisdom, kindness, and goodness”.

The FOF is telling you, you are happier than LIFE PEOPLE? Right?

This HAPPINESS is evoked by the “WORK” (special methods of the FOF)? Right?

Are your teachers telling you that it’s up to you to maximize your efforts on your WAY/WORK and that it’s up to you to CREATE YOUR SOUL? That’s up to you to save YOUR LIFE, YOUR SOUL with the support of the FOF?

Is the FOF OMNIPOTENT, the source of HAPPINESS?

I think HAPPINESS is nothing we get from an institution or another person. True Happiness is something we give and we cannot pay for it!

We are learning it every day of our lives if we realize how fragile we are!

Dear Panorea and all,
“If one keeps on being in “imagination” about ones personal powers, about their leader’s “level of being” and about one’s relationship with the “Gods”, one will keep on being “identified” with the Fellowship of Friends as being THE ONLY solution and the only place on earth one can evolve as a human being.

If one does not have the guts to step for a month or two aside, watch what is happening as an “interested stranger”, one will not experience the contradictions.”

As I thaw from the imaginary life I had and was in the Fellowship, it is clear to me that there are already in place enough people to commit suicide if things were allowed to continue as they are going. There are many who are already so lobotomized that they would die convinced that they are going to heaven with the Queen at the head of the procession.

Laughing about it might be a lot of fun (and please don’t stop making us laugh, those of you who can). Easing our own discomfort so that we buffer the reality of the Fellowship for our selves is in no way different to what we did inside while we neglected others and ourselves each day. There are many here and in the Greater Fellowship who think you can shut the door on this and it’ll disappear. Who don’t care if, in ten or fifteen years they hear there’s been a massive suicide in the FOF from all the people that knew that life without Robert milking new members was not going to be easy anyway and opted to die with him in a “magnificent gold alchemy event”.

The perspective of forcing the shut down of the Fellowship is not pretty but who of you dares to say that the perspective of leaving it open is any better? If there are any of you who do, please help me, I need to know these things and find relativity about it. I am so angry and sad again today. It’s been almost two years out and I’d been good for about a month, feeling I could almost leave them alone, “get a life” but I ask of each one of you, is that what you really want? To get a life and forget about it so that they can continue to do the same things to others? So that they can continue to sink deeper into that madness?

They obviously do not have enough common sense to close it on their own and it is as obvious that very few here have enough common sense to help close it legally, judging by the few that have signed the petition.

It is all very pretty here. We can go on forever making fun of each other or insulting each other or telling each other that the laws of the United States are good enough to let people like these act freely for endless lifetimes but please let me know that that is what all of you are so happy with so that I move out of here and stop bugging you about the need to do something different and get on with my life if there’s such thing as a life to get on with, with this reality.

Do you still have friends inside? Husbands? Wives? Children? Tell me, is the measure of your love one in which you’ve given up on their possibilities so thoroughly that you will not fight to get them out? Do you think they are so worthless that they are better off going from event to event like trained poodles without a human thought knowing that right in front of them those boys are being manipulated to the end of their wits without a guarantee that they will ever “get a life” enough to overcome the experience? And that the worst aspect of it is not that one old sick man raped them but that a whole community helped him? That a whole society has become so corrupted that it all happens in front of our noses year after year and we pay for it?

You continue to help him for as long as you neglect to do anything about it. Each person here has his/her hands all the way deep in the muck and not doing anything serious about it helps them to destroy their and other people’s lives.

It might be very good to feel good about one’s self and the fact that one can actually heal and not cry every day with depression but on what ground can one feel good everyday knowing that one is not willing to help others who are sinking more deeply into that madness?

Things might be a little better in the Fellowship with the pressure we’ve put on it, but everyone here knows that no one in the Fellowship has any power besides Robert and as long as he is in power things will continue to happen just like that, only better disguised with a few more roses in the flower pots.

The new generation of enablers is much worse than the previous one because Robert did not have as much power then and because unlike Girard, they are already Robert’s boys, they have already accepted their pimp and whore role without complaints. What Girard didn’t sell physically he sold psychologically but these new guys: Dorian, Asaf and the rest, is Mihai still in there? Want the lifestyle for them selves, they like the idea of being little Roberts. Is that what you here are protecting? It is no longer just one Girard which was terrible enough, it is now two little promised to become conscious beings and all their personal enablers.

How many more people, how deeply do they have to get hurt for you to do anything serious about it? What kind of abuse do you personally need to see to act against it? What do you need to suffer to stand against this absurdity, this cruelty and stop protecting your personal comfort?

When I read you, it helps me realize how far non members are to the reality of the Fellowship Cult and how deep in the muck we are already in the Fellowship. Yes, I’ve never left, I’m still a Fellowship victim, I have not yet healed and I hate it more each day.

Happiness is a word that has not existed in the Fellowship for decades. It is out of the vocabulary, we do not hear about it and are too afraid to pronounce it because what we are meant to do is make effort and transform suffering. We are supposed to be suffering so that we can transform it and make supra human efforts so that we can suffer and transform them.

You’re a lovely human being trying to help us but you’ve no idea how far off you are from our reality. Please don’t leave us, I need you to remember that it was different for some people and that somewhere out here it didn’t get so crazy for everyone

Dorian, Asaf and the rest, is Mihai still in there? Want the lifestyle for them selves, they like the idea of being little Roberts. Is that what you here are protecting?

They like the idea and unlike Girard who at least paid most of his way, they are getting paid for it with big privileges.

WULsuzy, I’m glad for you and your family. I saw many leave their children because somewhere in our being we knew the Fellowship was not good enough for them either. It’s ironic isn’t it? Some of us abandoned them so that the Fellowship wouldn’t hurt them but we didn’t know enough to leave it ourselves. We’d already invested too much of ourselves in it.

I had already left Dani when Elisa joined the Fellowship when she was eighteen and I was so proud the that my eighteen year old was joining “my” School, the life I had chosen as The Way!. That you would all know that I had given birth to a child who already at eighteen knew that the School was where she would develop her life: a Conscious Life!!

And yet when I left Dani I knew the Fellowship was not a good place for children as if I had accepted that working on my self, my “awakening” wasn’t something she should share. Isn’t that ironic? The things we accepted? Here we were supposedly becoming conscious beings and hiding and separating our selves from the people we loved and needed us. Or me, me, me, if you think I cannot use us because you are the chosen ones that it didn’t happen to you?

And you think you are not deceiving people?

Stay short you sick mother fucker, Daily Cardiac, stay short because I’ve not yet started singing and when I do even your ears will break.

128 Elena: Life was not without its challenges when I left the Fellowship.

When I left the Fellowship in 1994 I packed up and moved away with my son for five years because I was concerned for him being around REB at the age of seven. I took him away from all his friends and his father who was quite upset with me at the time. He has since shared with me how hard it was for him to leave his little safe cocoon of a life in the Fellowship. Many of his friends have experienced their own traumas from this experience. And I have to admit at the time because he was so young I didn’t realize what a profound effect it had on him.

Five years later I moved back to the area because I felt my son was old enough to make his own decisions, and because even though I didn’t agree with his dad staying in the Fellowship I knew he needed his dad as much as he needed me. I believe I made the right decision.

LOS ANGELES (ARK) — It took almost 10 years, but a former devoted follower of Robert Burton has finally made his first friend after leaving the school.

Reporters gathered around a major cinemaplex on Friday night to talk with the ex-student as he entered a movie theater with his new friend.

“You know, it’s really hard to make friends after you leave the FOF,” Smith said. “You need to actually go up to people and say hello.”

Smith says he’s also getting closer to people by talking with them at work, getting involved in volunteer projects, joining book discussion clubs, and even looking here and there online. He finally realized that “showing an interest in people” is helpful.

But Smith said most people ran from him “like the plague” once he described his long-time experience with the Fellowship of Friends.

OREGON HOUSE, Calif. (ARK) — Stocks slid lower Friday amid growing concerns about the nation’s continued rise in unemployment. The Dow Jones industrial average fell 143 points to end the week down nearly 5 percent, its worst week since November.

But the Fellowship of Friends has nothing to worry about despite the nation’s continued economic woes, said FOF Treasurer I.M. Glib.

“We will be ready,” Glib said as he casually signed his approval for the purchase of 750 palm trees. “There’s no connection between our fate and the fate of the world. Look; we’re an ark for a new civilization being guided by angels. No one manages money better than us. So no worries. We’re cool.”

The FOF is planning another Journey Forth By Day celebration this year. The 2009 event will be held in Cancun, Mexico. The FOF goal is to bring every handsome young man in the school to the resort community.

“Now that’s what I call journeying forth by day,” Robert Burton said earlier this week with a short laugh. “Of course, if anyone complains, we’ll send them back to where they came from. As Homer said, ‘Submit in silence.’ ”

No one could explain how the FOF would make money by holding the JFBD celebration in Cancun. But Burton said, “Make your teaching payments first, and everything else will take care of itself.”

OREGON HOUSE, Calif. (ARK) — Breaking new ground this week, a Fellowship of Friends member maxed out his 44th credit card — bringing his credit card debt to a whopping $255,123.18.

“It’ll be fine,” the student said Saturday. “Yes, my debt would be smaller if I hadn’t purchased all of those auction items and raffle tickets, and if I didn’t have all of these monthly teaching payments, but things will work out.”

The student is seven weeks behind in his teaching payments and therefor unable to attend events at Apollo.

“I know, that’s a bummer,” he said. “But it’ll work out for the best.”

One of the healing modalities many of us used when we left en masse in ’94 was to get together and laugh at the ridiculousness of some of the things we did in the Fellowship. It caused many a belly laugh. I think the FOFion has something!

OREGON HOUSE, Calif. (ARK) — The Fellowship of Friends (FOF) will soon release a new book that many believe is a type “manual” for how to succeed within the FOF and work one’s way to the top, as well as a guide to help avoid getting one’s butt kicked out of the school.

The book — titled “Thing You Shouldn’t Say” — will be hitting bookshelves in early February.

I have often wondered why it took so many years (14, in fact) from leaving the FOF (or, rather, being financially ejected) to starting to regain my creative life again as a teacher of precious metal crafting. The point about the ‘phoenix principle’ is that one must be reduced to the most meager ‘atom of essence’ to rebuild oneself. There seemed to be so many false starts in my play during those years (I had awakened to my possibilities whilst being a FOF member, although not actually being much of a FOFfer) and with bipolar affective disorder and the accompanying delusions of grandeur and feelings of failure, I realized that I had to come to that ‘little feeling of me in confidence’. When that happened, I made real friends and made, may I say, phenomenal leaps in my professional life. Although I talk about, as do you, working towards bringing down the FOF before more emotional damage is done, I am completely neutral about what may happen, since I have what I can work with in life and know that higher beings direct my play (Maybe talk to lauralupa about the Ayuvedic principles of revisiting one’s demons, or is it Ellen?). To help you along, maybe, this extract from a track on my Andrea Bocelli ‘Amore’ album…………

“Once in every life there comes a time
We step out all alone and into the night;
The moment won’t last, but we remember it again
When we close our eyes.

Like stars across the sky,
We were born to shine
All of here because we believe.”

“There’s a hole in your resume — as there is for me, as there is for the rest of us. It’s called the Fellowship of Friends. We reported to none other than Robert Burton. We met no one with “gravitas.” We gained nothing but an imaginary sense of superiority over the whole earth.”

ya art, thanks for the hard-truth and a reality check on our friend mr. tanner here. from his recent posts it sounds like he’s trying to squeeze a bit of lemonade from his involvement…. although i think he was being a bit flippant when he suggested rejoining the fof, even the suggestion seems like a ‘symptom’ of something…. maybe he’s a more recent escapee? reminded me of a couple of these stages (again):

“The period of exiting from a cult is usually a traumatic experience and, like any great change in a person’s life, involves passing through stages of accommodation to the change:

Disbelief/denial: “This can’t be happening. It couldn’t have been that bad.”
Anger/hostility: “How could they/I be so wrong?” (hate feelings)
Self-pity/depression: “Why me? I can’t do this.”
Fear/bargaining: “I don’t know if I can live without my group. Maybe I can still associate with it on a limited basis, if I do what they want.”
Reassessment: “Maybe I was wrong about the group’s being so wonderful.”
Accommodation/acceptance: “I can move beyond this experience and choose new directions for my life” or…
Reinvolvement: “I think I will rejoin the group.”

as for my own attempt to squeeze some lemonade from the fof experience…. when i first started posting here i wrote an account of my escape and how it very nearly, literally, killed me — and it did kill a part of me — but i like to think that the old adage from nietzche is true: “what doesn’t kill you, makes you stronger.”

When I came out of the FOF, I had a real hard time dealing with why I was still alive, since the only ‘life’ could be in the FOF. Since I was for the most part depressed, I drowned my misery in alcohol. I had no direction, no friends and no aim. I put unnecessary pressure on my parents at that time, both of whom (and myself included) had not reached the point where we knew that I had bipolar affective disorder and needed professional and medicinal intervention. It took years coming to understand myself and finding the right ‘meds’…..Nigel

138
yes nigel, creativity is one of the FoF’s silent victims
people slowly lose all spontaneity and curiosity and forget that the Rest of the World is filled with expressions of art and creativity, only it’s not expressed in forms the “School” would approve of… contemporary art’s hydrogens just ain’t high enough for them!

FoFion, any possibility that the FoF will release a manual on the subject of forbidden arts? wait a minute… now that I think of it…

“From the moment they came to power, the Nazis launched a vicious campaign against art they designated “degenerate,” a category that included all modernist art, especially abstract, Cubist, Expressionist, and Surrealist art. Thus Picasso, Matisse, Klee, Kandinsky, Kirchner, and even nineteenth-century Impressionist and Post-Impressionist artists including Renoir, Degas, Cézanne and Van Gogh, were reviled as exponents of avant-garde art movements that were considered intellectual, elitist, foreign, and socialist-influenced. Jewish artists such as Marc Chagall were, of course, singled out for special condemnation. The Nazi government promoted a “true” German art, continuing in the tradition of German nineteenth-century realistic genre painting, that upheld “respectable” moral values and was easy to understand. Hitler’s inner circle also treasured certain Old Masters whom they regarded as expressing the true Aryan spirit, in particular Rembrandt, Cranach, and Vermeer. Museum directors and curators who refused to cooperate with the new anti-modernist collecting policies were dismissed.

In 1937, in order to purge German museums of their holdings of “degenerate” art, Joseph Goebbels, Minister for Propaganda and Public Enlightenment, charged a commission headed by Adolf Ziegler, one of Hitler’s favorite artists, with the seizure of works of German “degenerate” art created since 1910 owned by German state, provincial and municipal museums. Although the primary focus was on German art, the Ziegler commission’s reach soon expanded to encompass non-German artists such as the Dutch abstract painter Piet Mondrian. The confiscated art was gathered in a huge exhibition in Munich to educate the German people about the “evils” of modern art, and especially its alleged Jewish/Bolshevist influences. Marc Chagall’s Purim, confiscated from the Museum Folkwang in Essen, was one of the paintings selected for this infamous exhibition, entitled “Degenerate Art” (Entartete Kunst), which opened in Munich on July 19, 1937. Exhibition organizers surrounded the paintings and sculpture with mocking graffiti and quotations from Hitler’s speeches, designed to inflame public opinion against this “decadent” avant-garde art. Ironically, the exhibition attracted five times as many visitors (36,000 on one Sunday alone) as the equally large “Great German Art Exhibition” of Nazi-approved art that opened in Munich at the same time.”

thanks laura for the connection here between individual freedom & creativity…. vs. enforced notions about what constitutes ‘degenerate’ and ‘high’ art… as ‘they’ say: “beauty is in the ‘I’ of the beholder…”

laura re: your comment on the link… if you are really interested in the lyrics you can always google it… the words–and I–may be dated, as you imply… those were different times and the form changes… but the social critique is still relevant, imo…. it has to do with ‘status quo’ and an unquestioning relationship toward social programming…. that’s a lens we can use on the larger culture as well as the fof… in the old parlance, it has to do with ‘sleep’ of a sort…. all that aside, like i ‘said’ — beauty is in the ‘i’…

My father-in-law was a well known Austrian artist (modern). When the Nazi’s took over they asked him his opinion of “Nazi Art”. Well, he told them his honest opinion, which they did not appreciate, and he was forced to join the German army and was just lucky he was not sent to the Russian front.

thanks for the input wildz… what was your father-in law’s name? (not that i would know him…. but i ask wondering if there examples of his work on line?).

here’s a link to someone who was a contemporary of your relative… his art and writing/philosophy i have appreciated for some time…. there are some interesting sites accessed through this the link: for example, ‘synaethesia,’ the bauhaus movement, schoenburg… etc. maybe ya’ll are familiar…. nevertheless:

this may, or more likely, may not, make sense…. in the later case, here’s (yet) another nonsequitur…. to enjoy, or not:

“Novelty, give us novelty, seems to be the cry, heaven and earth and the wide sea cannot obtain the forms and fancies that are here displayed . . . like the whimsies of madness.”
Henry Cole, Journal of Design vol. 1, p.74 (1849)

not that it makes a heck uv-a-lot-uv difference to ya… on the other hand, maybe this can lead to something…. or not:

“In 1901, Kandinsky published his first essay on art called Critique of Critics. It was an extremely bold rebuttal to Russian art critics who were opposed to the contemporary art that was beginning to emerge. After this, he wrote a series of reviews on different art exhibitions, while at the same time organising many of his own. He did not begin to publish theory on art until years later, in 1910-1911, releasing Content and Form. This essay was focused on the spiritual nature of art and the artist. He also defined the relationship between artists and spectators, via the work of art, writing that the experience is “[e]motion—sensation—the work of art—sensation—emotion.” From 1910 to 1911, Kandinsky wrote several articles for Russian journals and newspapers, providing an examination of contemporary Russian art.

In 1911, Wassily Kandinsky published his first full-length text on art theory entitled On the Spiritual in Art. The text addressed many of the same things that Content and Form did, but extended far beyond it. Two separate editions of the book were released, the first in 1911 and the second in 1912. A lot of the text was devoted to the idea of theosophy (teaching about God) and, shortly after the publication of the book, Kandinsky was often accused of belonging to a cult…”

109 Bruce
Sorry, I don’t know (and never did know) anything about the petition. I just used my mailing address to collect the letters and send them on. I also don’t know where Jack has disappeared to. Jack? Are you out there?

yes, Happiness is irrelevant when He possess the secret of secrets, what Gods have bestowed on Him and His sacred school. The gift of presence needs to be acquired through the transformation of suffering. The suffering of being isolated, of having no friends and only followers, of having to force people to have sex with you, of having bodyguards because you see ghosts everywhere and feel threatened by people you once hurt. All the mess covered up in a package called “awakening”.

Happiness is not a “work I”. You as an individual only make sense in Robert’s Cult if you follow the instructions. If he wants to talk about the sequential nonsense, you have to pretend you understand what he is talking about and do your best to taste the tools he suggests. And then you keep on hoping that the madness will subdue, but he goes on with ancient poop and 19th century devils reading the Bible and you keep on smiling to your friends and nod your head during meetings.

Happiness and Joy are not for the Fellowship Warriors who fight with their four fingers for presence. They do not laugh around food and they keep their teeth inside their mouth when they are not posing for a photograph with their teacher. They have paid with their credit card for the eternal moment and they might be sharing the photo with two other guys because this brings the costs down.

Happiness and Joy are forbidden fruits in the Fellowship of Fools. You make sacrifices for a higher aim, an aim that is clearly dictated by your master who knows everything because he is a man number 7,3 (he found out about it after an earthquake). He has been talking about his secret and divine qualities so for years and everybody knows about it. If you do doubt this you are simply no school material.

150
dear ton, I just read your reply – so sorry that it sounded like I implied that either you or Zappa are outdated! I would not dare…
I am not THAT arrogant and I do love Frank Zappa (and your postings)! it was just a personal sentimental note (yes, one can get sentimental over Freak out), as that song brought back some memories of an old me that’s long gone and yet still very much alive… I was really sorry I could not understand the lyrics at the time because of my poor English, as I was so curious to find out what those crazy Californians had to say…
well, I did learn at least that, didn’t I?

#146, God Laughing,
At the beginning of the meeting, a few people photographed that “Happiness” was not a work word. An active discussion ensued, thus the meeting created a lot of energy and laughter. I remember feeling that the meeting itself was not very successful. What did/do I know?

…an afterthought: while in recent years I have taken a strong interest in the music that is happening right now, as I find many bold and talented artists in the contemporary indie scene, my youngest dauther, now sixteen, is totally immersed in the music of the sixties and seventies (and so are many of her friends). She is studying the electric guitar and her idols at the moment are Jimi Hendrix, Frank Zappa, Cream and Funkadelic… it’s nice to see that a new generation of young people can connect to and totally “get” the things we listened to when we were growing up (and reject the commercial stuff that fills the radio waves and MTV in spite of the brainwashing they have been subjected to by the music industry)

still keeping it personal, this is a video of my oldest daughter’s boyfriend singing and playing the guitar, hope you like it… don’t worry if you don’t understand his “creative” English lyrics, I do not either!

back to the subject of individual freedom and totalitarianism.
the following excerpts are from:
THE RAPE OF THE MIND: The Psychology of Thought Control, Menticide, and Brainwashing, by Joost A. M. Meerloo, M.D., published in 1956, World Publishing Company. (Out of Print)
found at: http://www.ninehundred.net/control/mc-ch6.html

Any form of leadership, if unchecked by controls, may gradually turn into dictatorship. Being a leader, carrying great power and responsibility for other people’s lives, is a monumental test for the human psyche. The weak leader is the man who cannot meet it, who simply abdicates his responsibility. The dictator is the man who replaces the existing standards of justice and morality by more and more private prestige, by more and more power, and eventually isolates himself more and more from the rest of humanity. His suspicion grows, his isolation grows, and the vicious circle leading to a paranoid attitude begins to develop.

The dictator is not only a sick man, he is also a cruel opportunist. He sees no value in any other person and feels no gratitude for any help he may have received. He is suspicious and dishonest and believes that his personal ends justify any means he may use to achieve them. Peculiarly enough, every tyrant still searches for some self-justification. Without such a soothing device for his own conscience, he cannot live.

His attitude toward other people is manipulative; to him, they are merely tools for the advancement of his own interests. He rejects the conception of doubt, of internal contradictions, of man’s inborn ambivalence. He denies the psychological fact that man grows to maturity through groping, through trial and error, through the interplay of contrasting feelings. Because he will not permit himself to grope, to learn through trial and error, the dictator can never become a mature person. But whether he acknowledges them or not, he has internal conflicts, he suffers somewhere from internal confusion. These inner “weaknesses” he tries to repress sternly; if they were to come to the surface, they might interfere with the achievement of his goals.
…
In Totalitaria, the citizen no longer knows the real core of his mind. He no longer feels himself an “I”, an ego, a person. He is only the object of official barrage and mental coercion. Having no personality of his own, he has no individual conscience, no personal morality, no capacity to think clearly and honestly. He learns by rote, he learns thousands of indoctrinated facts and inhales dogma and slogans with every breath he draws. He becomes an obedient pedant, and pedantry makes people into something resembling pots filled with information instead of individuals with free, growing personalities.

Becoming wiser and freer implies selective forgetting and changes of mind. This we accept, this we leave behind. Alert adjustment requires a change of patterns, the capacity to be de-conditioned, to undo and unlearn in order to become ripe for new patterns. The citizen of Totalitaria has no chance for such learning through unlearning, for growth through individual experience. Official oversimplifications induce the captive audience into acceptance and indoctrination.
…
In Totalitaria, there is no faith in fellow men, no “caritas,” no love, because real relationships between men do not exist, just as they do not exist between schizophrenics. There is only faith in and subjection to the feeding system, and there is in every citizen a tremendous fear of being expelled from that system, a fear of being totally lost, comparable with the schizophrenic’s feeling of rejection and fear of reality. In the midst of spiritual loneliness and isolation, there is the fear of still greater loneliness, of more painful isolation. Without protective regulations from the outside, internal hell may break lose. Strong mechanical external order must be used to cover the internal chaos and approaching breakdown.

We have had experience in postwar years with several refugees from the totalitarian world who broke down when they had to cope with a world of freedom where personal initiative was required. The fear of freedom brought them to a state of panic. They no longer had strong enough egos to build and maintain their defenses against the competitive demands of free democratic reality.

As in schizophrenia, a maneuverable and individual ego cannot exist in Totalitaria. In schizophrenia the ego shrinks as a result of withdrawal; in Totalitaria, as a result of constant merging in mass feelings. If such a shrunken ego should grow up, with its own critical attitude, its needs for verification of facts and for understanding, it would then be beaten down as being treacherous and nonconforming.
…
Totalitarianism is man’s escape from the fearful realities of life into the virtual womb of the leader. The individual’s actions are directed from this womb — from the inner sanctum. The mystic center is in control of everything; man need no longer assume responsibility for his own life. The order and logic of the prenatal world reign. There is peace and silence, the peace of utter submission. The members of the womb state do not really communicate; between them there is silence, the silence of possible betrayal, not the mature silence of reticence and reservedness.

Totalitaria increases the gap between the things one shows and communicates and the things one secretly dreams and thinks deep within oneself. It develops the artificial split-mindedness of political silence. Whatever little remains of individual feeling and opinion is kept carefully enclosed. In the schizophrenic world of Totalitaria, there is no free mutual exchange, no conversation, no exclamation, no release from emotional tension. It is a world of silent conspirators. Indeed, the atmosphere of suspicion is the big attacker of mental freedom because it makes people cling together, conspiring against mysterious enemies — first from outside, then among themselves.
…
The need to find conspiracies, to discover persecutors and criminals is another schizophrenic manifestation. It is psychologically related to an infantile need for a feeling of omnipotence. Megalomaniac feelings grow better in an atmosphere of mysterious secrecy. Secrecy and conspiracy increase the delusion of power. That is why so many people like to pry into other people’s lives and to play the spy.

This feeling of conspiracy also lies behind the pathological struggle with imaginary persecutors, a struggle we find both in mentally ill individuals and in our mythical Totalitaria. “It is there!” “It is chasing us!” All the inner fears of losing the nirvanic womb-illusion become rampant. Mysterious ghosts and vultures chase people out of nirvana and paradise.

In these fantasies, the patriarch, the dictator, the idol, becomes both the universal danger and the omnipotent savior at the same time. Not even the citizens of Totalitaria really love this cruel giant. Suspicion against the breast that feeds and the hand that guides and forbids is often found in the fantasy of schizophrenic children, who experience the nourisher as the enemy, the dominating ogre, bribing the growing mind into submission.

The deep hate the sick individual feels toward the parental figure cannot be expressed directly, and so it is displaced onto the self or onto scapegoats. Scapegoatism is also part of the totalitarian strategy. As we pointed out before, the scapegoat temporarily absorbs all the individual’s inner fury and rage. Kulaks, Negroes, Jews, Communists, capitalists, profiteers, and warmongers — any or all of them can play that role. Perhaps the greatest dangers, to the totalitarian mind, is the use of intellect and awareness and the “egg-head’s” demand for free, verifying thinking. Aberration and perversion are chosen by the citizens of Totalitaria, as they are by the inhabitants of madhouses, over the tiring, intellectual control.

In the center of the totalitarian fears and fantasies stands the man-eating god and idol. He is unconquerable. He uses man’s great gift of adjustment to bring him to slavery. Every man’s inner core of feelings and thoughts has to belong to the leader.

Is the citizen of Totalitaria consciously aware of this? Probably not. Modern psychology has taught us how strongly the mental mechanism of denial of reality works. The eye bypasses external occurrences when the mind does not want them to happen. Secondary justifications and fantasies are formed to support and explain these denials. In Totalitaria we find the same despising of reality facts as we do in schizophrenia. How else are we to explain the fact that Hitler was still moving his armies on paper after they were already defeated?

Totalitarian strategy covers inner chaos and conflict by the strict order of the police state. So does the compulsive schizophrenic patient, by his inner routine and schedules. These routines and schedules are a defense against painful occurrences in external reality. This internal robotization may lead to denial of internal realities and internal needs as well. The citizen of Totalitaria, repressing and rejecting his inner need for freedom, may even experience slavery as liberation. He may go even one step further — yearn for an escape from life itself, a delusion that he could become omnipotent through utter destruction.
…
This all sounds like a bitter comedy, but the fantasy of schizophrenics has taught us how the mind can retreat into delusion when there is a fear of daily existence. Under these circumstances, fantasy begins to prevail over reality, and soon assumes a validity which reality never had. The totalitarian mind is like the schizophrenic mind; it has a contempt for reality. Think for a moment of Lysenko’s theory and its denial of the influence of heredity. The totalitarian mind does not observe and verify its impressions of reality; it dictates to reality how it shall behave, it compels reality to conform to its fantasies.

The comparison between totalitarianism and psychosis is not incidental. Delusional thinking inevitably creeps into every form of tyranny and despotism. Unconscious backward forces come into action. Evil powers from the archaic past return. An automatic compulsion to go on to self-destruction develops, to justify one mistake with a new one; to enlarge and expand the vicious pathological circle becomes the dominating end of life. The frightened man, burdened by a culture he does not understand, retreats into the brute’s fantasy of limitless power in order to cover up the vacuum inside himself. This fantasy starts with the leaders and is later taken over by the masses they oppress.

What else can man do when he is caught in that tremendous machine called Totalitaria? Thinking — and the brain itself — has become superfluous, that is, only reserved for the elite. Man has to renounce his uniqueness, his individual personality, and must surrender to the equalizing and homogenizing patterns of so-called integration and standardization. This arouses in him that great inner emptiness of the savage child, the emptiness of the robot that unwittingly years for the great destruction.

laura, no need to apologize, i wasn’t offended in the least. i thought you were just being matter-of-fact and i was acknowledging the facts while at the same time trying to indicate the context and intent of the link. i suppose if it needs too much explanation it loses effectiveness and if a link or an idea here doesn’t lead to something like further comment or conversation or at least some private personal reflections and associations by the reader (thank you for that), then it’s simply more fodder, another non sequitur…. nevertheless, re: being ‘dated’ — ya, i too first heard zappa when i was about 15…. my posting of the zappa link came out of reading your post about nazis and notions of “degenerate” art and the role of individuality and creativity…. zappa came to mind in this connection because he is considered by many to be a “degenerate” sort…. most people may find very little to appreciate in his work but there is no denying his creativity, or his individuality. so what do the the nazis (in your example) and the fof have in common? among other things, individuality and the creativity that can flow from individuality is SYSTEMATICALLY quashed or at least redirected into more “useful” activities… the fof has no interest in the true development of individuality and creativity, both are perceived to be and treated like a threat to the collective organization…. it’s just another facet of the mind control that goes on.

Student Photographed for ‘Negativity’
An attractive Italian woman from Apollo was photographed for Negativity magazine last week. The beautiful brunette will be part of a special eight-page spread featuring photos of sultry cult members.

Student Finally Leaves
A Fellowship of Friends student finally left the school Saturday after a run of nearly 30 years. “It wasn’t Robert Burton’s doomsday predictions,” he said. “I could live with that. It also wasn’t his weird ideas about the moon, or his sexual addiction with his followers. No, when I heard he actually gets someone to fold his underwear… thatwas the last straw for me.”

Palm Tree Plantings Down 35% Last Quarter
One hundred and ten thousand fewer palm trees were planted at Apollo for the fourth quarter 2008 — down 35% from a year ago.

Entire School Working with King of Hearts
Following a trend that goes back to the humble beginnings of the Fellowship of Friends, it’s now official: The entire school is working with the king of hearts. “I’m honored that so many wish to work with me,” the king said during a visit to Apollo. “But I’m disappointed that we’re not getting a lot done together. You know, I’m thinking it’s better if I just work alone.”

Student Finds Numerous ‘Double Entendres’ in Sequence
A Fellowship of Friends student presented a new theory that the Sequence is actually filled with numerous double entendres. “The joke is on us,” he said Saturday. “Long Be is just what it sounds like. And about ‘holding’ the Be, let’s not even go there.”

When I read you, it helps me realize how far non members are to the reality of the Fellowship Cult and how deep in the muck we are already in the Fellowship. Yes, I’ve never left, I’m still a Fellowship victim, I have not yet healed and I hate it more each day.

Happiness is a word that has not existed in the Fellowship for decades. It is out of the vocabulary, we do not hear about it and are too afraid to pronounce it because what we are meant to do is make effort and transform suffering. We are supposed to be suffering so that we can transform it and make supra human efforts so that we can suffer and transform them.

You’re a lovely human being trying to help us but you’ve no idea how far off you are from our reality. Please don’t leave us, I need you to remember that it was different for some people and that somewhere out here it didn’t get so crazy for everyone”

____________________________________________

Elena,

It is very difficult to HEAL if some words here on the BLOG open up old wounds/clarify once more the mental torture techniques of the FOF or if the wounds are almost deadly.

Those words are not the warnings and the stories of former and present members of the FOF.

Those words are some posts given to the BLOG with the INTENSION of HURTING sooner or later and they pursue a goal.

The GOAL is the ENDING of the BLOG and its activities because it is unmasking the FOF.

But let me tell you another story:

HAPPINESS, to LEARN AND UNDERSTAND HAPPINESS is a process and if you are going through it, you will go on a journey with light and shadow, laughing and suffering and sometimes through something fade to grey.

The fade to grey is something with many facets.

You may be sticky with it and it appears to be like lethargy but that’s the point, if you lie in state of the fade to grey your energy/creativity will be sucked out and that’s really a way how to lull your soul to eternal sleep.

The FOF lulls its students in into a false sense of pseudo-security.

On the face of it the STUDENTS are working very hard (the donations/ the duties), they serve the WORK, they try to transform suffering into “supra human abilities”.

That’s no WORK that’s the opposite and that’s so much more than lethargy it is the dying process of the brain of a living human being.

If you are following this path you will become depressive and if you are prone to depression this illness becomes first acute and then chronic ( Robert. E. Burton takes antidepressants, Yes?).

To hinder a person to live his/her full positive and creative potential is nothing else but a crime and it will increase depression etc.

God Laughing: “Ellen T, I remember you led a meeting with Happiness as the topic some years ago in the Prytenean. It was very positive and I enjoyed it. I was told the next day by a close Israeli friend of Asaf how he and Robert snickered about the topic you had chosen and how Robert laughed saying “well, at least it has -penis- in it.”

————-
This gets to the heart of the matter. It’s simple: If people start thinking about happiness, they’ll start questioning the wisdom of supporting the fof at the expense of one’s own happiness. It’s a thoughtful topic, and it leads to a lot of uncomfortable realizations about burton and the fof.

I die a little more each day
I place flowers on top of my self and move on.

Daily Cardiac, should I apologize again for mistreating you because I feel you mock my and other’s suffering in the Fellowship? O.K. I apologize, which doesn’t mean it won’t happen again when you mock us again. I do not plan when to hurt others and methodically manipulate them into turning against themselves like you do but after seventeen years in the Fellowship I sense when someone is doing that and have developed a violent reaction against it after being inhibited to react for so many years. I am happy for myself that I can respond violently enough to your manipulation and will not try to stop myself. You might think this is a public forum where your personal agenda is not taken into account but there is no difference for me between you personally and you publicly. Please take that into account.

For myself I hope you never come back here but this is an open forum. If you continue to feel compelled to defend the Fellowship I will gladly be here to meet you.

Today is a day to cry for Israel. Today is a day to cry for the Palestinians. Today is a day to cry for all of us.
Today is a day of war.
War anywhere, at this point in our history, is an action that threatens peace everywhere. Particularly when it comes to the Middle East. From its spiritual significance to its political significance, it is humanity’s hot spot. It always has been and probably it always will be. It’s where all the rivers of human perspective meet, to become either a cauldron of hatred or an ocean of love.
While it might be tempting to “take sides” between Israel and the Palestinians, spiritually there are no sides to be taken. God does not give us victory in battle but rather lifts us above the battlefield. As a generation, our moral imperative to end war period, to somehow move beyond the idea that war is an acceptable means of solving problems. Anything less then that makes us attitudinal conspirators with a line of probability leading to nuclear catastrophe.
According to Swiss psychologist Carl Jung, humanity’s biggest problems cannot be solved; they must be outgrown. Our task is to create a field of consciousness in which the idea of war has dropped from the ethers.
So how do we outgrow war?
The first thing we do is to accept the possibility that the end of war is possible. In fact, in the words of Congressman Dennis Kucinich, “we must challenge the belief that war is inevitable.” We must embrace the possibility that a world without war could exist.
Secondly, we must mature beyond the belief that the thinking that got us into this mess can lead us out of it. “The problems of the world will not be solved on the level of thinking we were at when we created them,” wrote Einstein. We must realize that the mortal ego will not provide us with a solution, because it itself is the problem. Notions such as, “The Israelis have a right to defend themselves,” and “The Palestinians have taken so much abuse; what do you expect them to do?” are both insidious drivers of war masquerading as principled stands. They keep us attached to the very duality that is the root of separation and war.
On a spiritual level, our greatest service to both Israelis and Palestinians is to reach for a higher truth within our own minds. For an essential principle of metaphysical reality is that all minds are joined; as any of us are drawn to higher thoughts, then all of us are drawn to higher thoughts. As we ourselves embrace a higher truth, we help create an anti-gravitational force field that lifts all minds above separation, hatred and war.
For all our talk about wanting to be the change, how many of us are siding now against one side or the other in the current Mid-East conflict. If you really want to help the situation there, ask God to remove from your heart any judgment you have against the Israelis or the Palestinians. Any thought of judgment you hold is like a gun that you yourself are firing.
The human race is evolving to the realization that what is happening on the level of consciousness both precedes and determines what happens in the world. War is just an effect, not a cause. With the power of our minds, we can move beyond the level of effect to the level of cause. There, and only there, can we wipe out what President Franklin Roosevelt called the “beginnings of all war.”
As Americans, we have a creed — a set of principles enshrined and institutionalized in our founding documents. First and foremost among them is that “all men are created equal.” Period. End of story. Don’t be lured into thinking that either Israelis or Palestinians have been either the perfect innocents or the perfect victims here; such thinking serves neither. The greatest gift you can give to both is to realize that on a spiritual level, Israelis and Palestinians are one. Their only true reality is the reality of whom they are in this moment, freed from any thoughts of the past.
Complexity is of the ego; do not linger there. Of course there is a complicated history to the struggle currently playing out in the Middle East, and that complicated history has significance and relevance for traditional political formulation. So leave that to the traditional politicians. Our task as seekers and purveyors of a higher human consciousness is to move beyond traditional political notions, to a holistic politics that embraces the relevance of psychological and spiritual realities to the political issues of our time. As students of Gandhi and Dr. King, we know that moving beyond the violence in our own hearts is essential if we are to be conduits for the creation of a world at peace. The truly new politics goes beyond mere “post-partisan” hand-shaking and collaboration among former rivals. It takes us to a new kind of thinking as a basis for the creation of a new kind of world.
Traditionalists can call us naïve all they want to. But anyone who thinks that human hatred can simply be bombed away…they are naïve. Anyone who thinks we can continue to tolerate violence on this planet at ever-increasing levels and have such conflagrations not lead to the ultimate cataclysm of nuclear catastrophe… they are naïve. Anyone who thinks that the narrowness of a rationalistic, mechanistic human perspective can lead us out of the hell which that perspective itself has created…they are naïve. And those who see prayer as merely “symbol, not substance”…they are naïve. Prayer is hardly just symbol; it is a mover of hearts, and thus a mover of mountains.
Mountains we now need desperately to move.
Through the grace of God we are not powerless; according to A Course in Miracles, moving mountains is small compared to what we can do. War is at heart a spiritual problem and it can only be eradicated with a spiritual solution….a solution that lies within all of us.
Martin Luther King Jr. said there is a power in our hearts more powerful than the power of bullets. He described Mahatma Gandhi as the first person in the world to take the love ethic of Jesus Christ and turn it into a broad scale social force for good (To Gandhi himself, non-violence was not just the love ethic of Jesus, but rather the heart of all religion and the heart of reality itself). On today’s geo-political landscape, we see hatred turned into a political force all around us; the politics of non-violence turnslove into a political force. The question for any conscious human being, much less spiritual seeker, is, “How can I help do that?” Only the power in our hearts will be able to eradicate the idea of war, and then the reality of war from the experience of the human race.
According to Gandhi, the problem with the world was that humanity was not in its right mind. And arguably, we still are not. War, quite simply, is insane. For those of us who wish to be part of the solution, not part of the problem of war; it is time to change our own minds, to accept a healing of our own war-like thoughts, in order to create a new field of possibility. Whether dealing with the transformation of the individual or of the transformation of the world, only what is changed on the level of consciousness becomes a fundamental change in the conditions of the world.
For five minutes each day, be a spiritual activist.
You probably already know what to do. Turn off the TV; neither CNN, MSNBC or FOX know the news. They only know data.
Turn off the bright lights. Put down the newspaper. And go within.
However you do it, turn your attention to the God of your understanding. Surrender your own hatred, give over your own wars, and ask that this year you be lifted above the violence that still lives inside your heart.
With your eyes closed, see on one side of your inner vision the Israeli people. See their physicality, their mannerisms, as you recognize them on the material plane. Now see a light within their hearts, and slowly watch that light expand, extending beyond the confines of their bodies. See the bodies begin to fade before the greater light of their eternal selves.
Now with your inner eye look to the other side of your inner vision, and see there the Palestinian people. See their physicality, their mannerisms, as you recognize them on the material plane. Now see a light within their hearts, and slowly watch that light expand, extending beyond the confines of their bodies. See the bodies begin to fade before the greater light of their eternal selves.
Now using your inner eye – your greatest source of power -bear witness to what happens as the inner light of the Israelis begins to merge with the inner light of the Palestinians. Bear witness to the merging of their spiritual selves. Simply watch and focus, for what you focus on grows stronger.
You are bearing witness now to a higher truth, thus using the power of your mind to draw a heavenly truth into material manifestation. In the presence of higher thought forms, lower ones fall of their own dead weight. In the presence of light, darkness disappears. In the presence of eternal truth, temporal lies begin to fall away.
In the words of Dr. King, “No lie can last forever.” The idea that the Israeli and Palestinian people are truly separate, or have separate needs, is simply a lie of the mortal mind. Spiritually, we are all one. Israelis and Palestinians were created by the same God; in Him they are equal and they are joined eternally. Only thought formshave separated them. Thought forms of guilt and separation have been handed down to children born innocent of such lies, generation after generation; those are the true enemy here, not either group of people.
As any of us move beyond the fear-based thought forms of separation and guilt to the truth of our eternal oneness, it becomes easier for everyone else to do so as well. Let’s give up the way-too-easy, so-American way of chiding either Israelis orPalestinians for their difficulty in forgiving the past. What both peoples have endured is almost unimaginable, and only the truly sainted among us should even for a minute consider judging either side.
We don’t have to; and when in our own right minds, we don’t want to.
Use the power of your mind to create a new possibility… a miracle in the Middle East.
As the poet Rumi wrote so eloquently, “Out beyond all ideas of right and wrong, there is a field. I’ll meet you there.” So go there now. Such thoughts are not just poetry, or even symbol, any longer. In the world that’s being born, they’re the stuff of a new politics.
No more simply asking, “But what can I do?” Go even further, to “What can I think? What can I pray for? What can I meditate on?” Pray for the removal of all walls that separate any of us from any of us, not only on our earth but also in our minds. Pray for the removal of the guns that still fire within your own mind as you accuse or withhold your forgiveness from anyone. And pray that at this perilous hour, those of us whose lives have not been touched by the horrors of war can be of service to those whose lives have been.
Dear God, please deliver them.
And dear God, deliver us.

My guess is this is the last we will hear from the tard. He inferred his special connection and conferred upon us his special message and is riding off into the sunset with but one regret: “I forgot to capitalize the P”

Christmas Donation. Because it has been observed that some members tend to leave when they do not receive what they pay for. Part of the fortune one voluntarily drops on Robert’s lap is the Christmas donation, Spring donation and Fall donation. All adds up to a good sum of monies that allow the mad circus running.

I was wondering how many members will put themselves together and will not pay this year.

TOWARDS A MIRACLE IN OREGON HOUSE
By Marianne Williamson (with selective editing from ET)

Today is a day to cry for the Fellowship. Today is a day to cry for its former members. Today is a day to cry for all of us.
Today is a day of war.
War anywhere, at this point in our history, is an action that threatens peace everywhere. Particularly when it comes to Oregon House. From its spiritual significance to its community significance, it’s not exactly humanity’s hot spot. It always has been and probably it always will be. It’s where Robert imagines that all the rivers of human perspective meet, to become either a cauldron of hatred or an ocean of love.
While it might be tempting to “take sides” between current members and former members, spiritually there are no sides to be taken. God does not give us victory in battle but rather lifts us above the battlefield. As a generation, our moral imperative is to end the idea of separation period, to somehow move beyond the idea that abuse is an acceptable means of evolution. Anything less than that makes us attitudinal conspirators with a line of probability leading to tragedic catastrophe.
According to Swiss psychologist Carl Jung, humanity’s biggest problems cannot be solved; they must be outgrown. Our task is to create a field of consciousness in which the idea of separation has dropped from the ethers.
So how do we outgrow separation?
The first thing we do is to accept the possibility that the end of abuse is possible. In fact, in the words of Congressman Dennis Kucinich (what a guy!), “we must challenge the belief that abuse is inevitable.” We must embrace the possibility that a spiritual school without abuse could exist.
Secondly, we must mature beyond the belief that the thinking that got us into this mess can lead us out of it. “The problems of the world will not be solved on the level of thinking we were at when we created them,” wrote Einstein. We must realize that the spiritual ego will not provide us with a solution, because it itself is the problem. Notions such as, “The current members have a right to look the other way,” and “The former members have taken so much abuse; what do you expect them to do?” are both insidious drivers of conflict masquerading as principled stands. They keep us attached to the very duality that is the root of separation and abuse.
On a spiritual level, our greatest service to both current members and former members is to reach for a higher truth within our own minds. For an essential principle of metaphysical reality is that all minds are joined; as any of us are drawn to higher thoughts, then all of us are drawn to higher thoughts. As we ourselves embrace a higher truth, we help create an anti-gravitational force field that lifts all minds above separation, illusion and abuse.
For all our talk about wanting to be the change, how many of us are siding now against one side or the other in the current blog conflict. If you really want to help the situation here, ask God to remove from your heart any judgment you have against the current members or the former members. Any thought of judgment you hold is like a gun that you yourself are firing.
The human race is evolving to the realization that what is happening on the level of consciousness both precedes and determines what happens in the world. Abuse is just an effect, not a cause. With the power of our minds, we can move beyond the level of effect to the level of cause. There, and only there, can we wipe out what President Franklin Roosevelt called the “beginnings of all abuse.”
As Americans, we have a creed — a set of principles enshrined and institutionalized in our founding documents. First and foremost among them is that “all men are created equal.” Period. End of story. Don’t be lured into thinking that either current members or former members have been either the perfect innocents or the perfect victims here; such thinking serves neither. The greatest gift you can give to both is to realize that on a spiritual level, current members and former members are one. Their only true reality is the reality of whom they are in this moment, freed from any thoughts of the past.
Complexity is of the ego; do not linger there. Of course there is a complicated history to the struggle currently playing out in the blog, and that complicated history has significance and relevance for traditional cult formulation. So leave that to the professors of cults. Our task as seekers and purveyors of a higher human consciousness is to move beyond traditional group notions, to a holistic humanity that embraces the relevance of psychological and spiritual realities to the community issues of our time. As students of Gandhi and Dr. King, we know that moving beyond the violence in our own hearts is essential if we are to be conduits for the creation of a world at peace. The truly new spirituality goes beyond mere “post-partisan” hand-shaking and mingling among former members. It takes us to a new kind of thinking as a basis for the creation of a new kind of world.
Traditionalists can call us naïve all they want to. But anyone who thinks that human illusion can only be picketed or petitioned away…they are naïve. Anyone who thinks we can continue to tolerate abuse in this organization at ever-increasing levels and still have such a spiritual community not lead to ultimate tragedy… they are naïve. Anyone who thinks that the narrowness of the Fellowship’s perspective can lead us out of the hell which that perspective itself has created…they are naïve. And those who see prayer as merely “the sequence”…they are naïve. Prayer is hardly just a repetition of words; it is a mover of hearts, and thus a mover of mountains.
Mountains we now need desperately to move.
Through the grace of God we are not powerless; according to A Course in Miracles, moving mountains is small compared to what we can do. Abuse is at heart a spiritual problem and it can only be eradicated with a spiritual solution….a solution that lies within all of us.
Martin Luther King Jr. said there is a power in our hearts more powerful than the power of sperm. He described Mahatma Gandhi as the first person in the world to take the love ethic of Jesus Christ and turn it into a broad scale social force for good (To Gandhi himself, non-violence was not just the love ethic of Jesus, but rather the heart of all religion and the heart of reality itself). On today’s geo-political landscape, we see hatred turned into a political force all around us; the politics of non-violence turns love into a political force. The question for any conscious human being, much less spiritual seeker, is, “How can I help do that?” Only the power in our hearts will be able to eradicate the idea of separation, and then the reality of abusive relationships from the experience of the human race.
According to Gandhi, the problem with the world was that humanity was not in its right mind. And arguably, we still are not. Separation, quite simply, is insane. For those of us who wish to be part of the solution, not part of the problem of abuse; it is time to change our own minds, to accept a healing of our own compartment-like thoughts, in order to create a new field of possibility. Whether dealing with the transformation of the individual or of the transformation of the world, only what is changed on the level of consciousness becomes a fundamental change in the conditions of the world.
For five minutes each day, be a spiritual activist.
You probably already know what to do. Turn off the TV; neither CNN, MSNBC or FOX know the news. They only know data.
Turn off the bright lights. Put down the newspaper. And go within.
However you do it, turn your attention to the God of your understanding. Surrender your own concepts, give over your own limitations, and ask that this year you be lifted above the conflict that still lives inside your heart.
With your eyes closed, see on one side of your inner vision the current members. See their physicality, their mannerisms, as you recognize them on the material plane. Now see a light within their hearts, and slowly watch that light expand, extending beyond the confines of their bodies. See the bodies begin to fade before the greater light of their eternal selves.
Now with your inner eye look to the other side of your inner vision, and see there the former members. See their physicality, their mannerisms, as you recognize them on the material plane. Now see a light within their hearts, and slowly watch that light expand, extending beyond the confines of their bodies. See the bodies begin to fade before the greater light of their eternal selves.
Now using your inner eye – your greatest source of power -bear witness to what happens as the inner light of the members begins to merge with the inner light of the ex-members. Bear witness to the merging of their spiritual selves. Simply watch and focus, for what you focus on grows stronger.
You are bearing witness now to a higher truth, thus using the power of your mind to draw a heavenly truth into material manifestation. In the presence of higher thought forms, lower ones fall of their own dead weight. In the presence of light, darkness disappears. In the presence of eternal truth, temporal lies begin to fall away.
In the words of Dr. King, “No lie can last forever.” The idea that the current students and former members are truly separate, or have separate needs, is simply a lie of the Robert Burton’s diseased mind. Spiritually, we are all one. Members and non-members were created by the same God; in Him they are equal and they are joined eternally. Only thought forms have separated them. Thought forms of guilt and separation have been handed down to new members born innocent of such lies, generation after generation; those are the true enemy here, not either group of people.
As any of us move beyond the fear-based thought forms of separation and guilt to the truth of our eternal oneness, it becomes easier for everyone else to do so as well. Let’s give up the way-too-easy, so-Fellowshippain way of judging either members or non members for their ignorance or negativity of Robert Burton’s abuse. What both peoples have endured is almost unimaginable, and only the truly sainted among us should even for a minute consider judging either side.
We don’t have to; and when in our own right minds, we don’t want to.
Use the power of your mind to create a new possibility… a miracle in Oregon House.
As the poet Rumi wrote so eloquently, “Out beyond all ideas of right and wrong, there is a field. I’ll meet you there.” So go there now. Such thoughts are not just poetry, or even symbol, any longer. In the world that’s being born, they’re the stuff of a new politics.
No more simply asking, “But what can I do?” Go even further, to “What can I think? What can I pray for? What can I meditate on?” Pray for the removal of all walls that separate any of us from any of us, not only on our earth but also in our minds. Pray for the removal of the words that still ignite within your own mind as you accuse or withhold your forgiveness from anyone. And pray that at this perilous hour, those of us whose lives have not been touched by the horrors of abuse can be of service to those whose lives have been.
Dear God, please deliver them.
And dear God, please deliver us.

Unfortunately sitting and meditating about these things while very fruitful will not have any effect until someone goes up there and makes the laws and the institutions and provides the forms that will allow for such inner world to manifest itself.

It is not praying and meditating on the problem that the world will know that you oppose the war. It is going out to the public square and manifesting against it that others will be inspired by your conviction.

Isn’t it interesting that although the writer says Palestinians and Israelis are equal she consistently names the Palestinians in second place?

While you meditate about how we are equal to each other out here and inside, events continue to take place in the Fellowship in which only Robert, Asaf and Girard speak while the rest of the members sleep their lethargic nightmare. When do you think it is necessary to wake up a dangerous sleep walker?

Band-aids are good for small cuts but when you’ve got a serial rapist with a legion of enablers you need laws to stop them and if the laws are part of their legion you need to change the laws. Those in power do not like the laws to be changed and they will kill you if they can as they are doing in Palestine, the United States, Colombia and every other country in the world. War is as much an aspect of life as peace. The problem with the old countries is that people want to live without fighting in the comfort of what they booted from others. It all comes back until the consciousness that is raised is that the balance of distribution is changed. Changed radically. Cults are another outlet of the establishment to divert people from taking action in reality like religion has always been. “Go to your little cults and pray to become better beings so that you can attract a better life for your selves. It is your being that brings so much misery to your life” On and on, the dogma is the same in and out so that people are kept under control.

The comfort of meditating and holding up the flag that one is changing the world sitting on one’s cushion was not Ghandi’s form. He went out there and risked his flesh each day and went to prison as often as they wanted and got shot. Let’s not use Ghandi’s name to impulse people to inaction and more comfort. One’s only got one opportunity to die in this lifetime, one might as well use it to fight for something worth living for.

In an exclusive interview, the FOFion recently talked with Gary, an 11-year-old domestic short-hair tabby with a regal and calm demeanor. Gary has made news recently by voicing his opinions about the Fellowship of Friends. We chased him down for this interview during his vacation on the Greek island of Santorini.

Photo of Gary:
_____________________

The FOFion: You’ve been speaking with unusual candor about the Fellowship of Friends in recent weeks. How did you learn about it?

Gary: My human “parents” were once members of the organization.

The FOFion: Some think you’re getting carried away.

Gary: No, I think it’s good. It’s healthy.

The FOFion: Does brainwashing occur in the FOF?

Gary: Holy smokes. You know how to begin an interview with a whopper.

The FOFion: We try.

Gary: Well, brainwashing could be right, but the word I’d use instead is “tuning.” Or maybe even re-tuning.

The FOFion: Tuning?

Gary: Yes. In my opinion, it’s a bit like tuning a musical instrument, or tuning your car radio. People will believe something different once their brains and hearts are re-tuned. For example, they believe that certain abnormal and destructive things are actually very normal and beneficial if they allow their brain to be tuned in a certain way. Or — to use another analogy — if they allow their car radios to be tuned to a certain station. People also tune things out that make them uncomfortable or that challenge assumptions that they’ve invested in for a certain time. They tune into things that make them feel comfortable and support their egos and support their assumptions. It’s not all bad. Occasionally tuning in can be life-giving, healthy, and informative, but often it’s not good.

The FOFion: This sounds a bit like The Secret, or neuroplasticity as described in The Brain Fitness Program, or maybe Wayne Dyer.

Gary: Maybe. I haven’t read or heard much about those theories. I can only read what my human parents read — you know, when I sit on their laps. But it’s true that humans may hear only certain things and won’t hear certain other things. As I was saying, allowing yourself to be re-tuned is not necessarily bad, because I think humans can learn many new things this way, and they can make themselves open to new and wonderful experiences — providing a new home for a furry domestic cat, for instance, even though they once believed they didn’t like cats. But this tuning can be dangerous, too, because if a clever human comes along with malevolent intentions, and if he or she figures out how to tune you, then you may end up doing things that are not only against your own interests, but against the interests of those around you. So I think the key is to pay attention to how you are tuned — what things you’re drawn to, and what your habitual ways of thinking are. And then occasionally re-tune yourself, if necessary, just as a musician needs to tune their musical instrument.

The FOFion: Wow. Okay. Let’s change the subject for a moment. What do you think about the Theory of Nine Lives?

Gary: Actually, one more thing about tuning. It’s a nice relaxation technique to re-tune yourself sometimes. Taking a deep breath is a bit like retuning yourself if you’re feeling stress, for example. But it’s nothing complicated. And in some ways that’s what makes it a bit scary sometimes: Humans are easily re-tuned. So they need a self-guidance system to avoid trouble.

The FOFion: Self-guidance system, as you call it… Does that relate to conscience?

Gary: Yes, I think it does. Although maybe it’s just self-guidance. Strike the word “system.”

The FOFion: Okay, what about my question — the Theory of Nine Lives?

Gary: Right. One of the weaknesses of humans is that they often pretend they know something when they actually don’t know it. There’s nothing inherently wrong with beliefs, but when you begin to think you have verified things beyond any doubt, or when you call it knowledge or factual information, or even use the word theory to describe it — and when you are no longer open to new information and new feedback — then you are entering dangerous territory. In my opinion, it’s healthy and natural to believe things, but it’s important to identify your beliefs as beliefs, and not pretend they are unassailable known facts.

The FOFion: So you’re saying the Theory of Nine Lives is a belief?

Gary: It’s not a theory at all. And it’s probably not even a belief. It’s a fun myth that people like to talk about in passing. Now, where did the myth originate that we cats have nine lives? I don’t know. I think humans have fun with the idea. But it’s a fascinating myth sometimes, because none of us know what happens to us once we die. And then it’s curious how Robert Burton has appropriated the idea and suggests that humans also have nine lives. And then he goes several steps further and suggests he knows which of the nine lives a person is in. It’s a serious problem, in my opinion, when humans follow these types of ideas without questioning them, or when they question them but don’t question them strongly enough. Who knows, maybe the notion goes back to ancient times. Maybe it connects to the nine points on the enneagram. We could endlessly speculate about these things.

The FOFion: You know what, you’re a lot more talkative than most cats I know.

Gary: I try.

The FOFion: Ok, what are some other weaknesses in humans?

Gary: Well, let me first say what I like about humans: They are very giving and creative, and it’s beautiful how they are so open to being inspired and how they radiate so much love. I feel so lucky to be associated with my human parents and my human brothers and sisters, and I thoroughly appreciate it when they bring guests over and they sit on the couch and hang out with me and my fellow cats and dogs. They’re very cool. And I appreciate that they brought me here to Santorini for a little break. I’m enjoying meeting all of these cats here.

The FOFion: You’re not a typical cat that way; most cats don’t like to travel.

Gary: Very true.

The FOFion: But you never answered my question. What are some of the other weaknesses of we humans?

Gary: Well, it gets back to what I was saying earlier. It relates to humans not acknowledging to themselves that beliefs are beliefs. It’s from losing that sense of mystery about the universe and their existence within it. It comes from pretending that they know things that they can’t possibly know.

The FOFion: Wow.

Gary: Yes, wow. [laughing] But you know, I should point out that we cats have some of the same weaknesses that humans do. We get jealous. We’re selfish sometimes. We cause pain in other beings when we hunt. But one blessing we have is that we usually don’t have irrational fears, and we don’t live our lives based on superstitions and endless regrets. And we don’t waste time moping and complaining about those who hurt us — we simply respond rationally and quickly to the problems we face. We also don’t kill others because they don’t believe what we believe. Some of our killing is pretty weird, when we kill our young for instance, but killing someone because they believe something different, for example, is going a few steps beyond weird in my opinion. Or hating someone for the same reason. Or even judging them.

The FOFion: Do humans, more than cats, too often try to separate themselves from the rest of the world? In other words, do humans have problems with a strong ego?

Gary: That sounds correct to me. You know, many of us cats have much to be thankful for because of what our human parents provide to us. But I sometimes sense we could teach humans a lot if they’d only be open to it.

The FOFion: I’ll agree with you on that. But I think you cats do teach humans a lot, and many do appreciate it.

Gary: Of course, dogs and other animals teach humans a lot, too. Do you have any cats yourself?

The FOFion: Hey, I’m doing the interview here. But yes, I do have cats. That’s why the editors picked me for this interview. So, what are some of your next projects?

Gary: The first thing that comes to mind is sitting on that white stucco wall over there and basking in the Santorini sun. Maybe I’ll get my picture in one of those coffee-table books.

The FOFion: [laughing] You just might! Well, thanks for joining us. You have a spectacular coat by the way. I’m sure it’ll be a fantastic photo. We wish you luck in your campaign.

Gary: Thank you. And you’re very welcome — any time. But for a while, I may just take a break. I may just sit here and relax and contemplate and enjoy. There’s so much to be thankful for.
_____________________

Ghandi (the great soul), the Buddha etc. did they act towards life/humanity?

I think yes, even if they were in a state of passive resistence it was not only NOTHINGNESS and beside meditation there was a time for the Buddha to take action, to go, to break out of the golden cage.

What makes it so difficult to ACT CONCERTED? What is the inner secret of the FOF-Membership shrouded in mystery?

So much suffering, but also so much “team spirit” even if many members are out?!

176, Elena,
Don’t mistake meditative insight for passivity, as it can lead to very direct and focussed action – out of the box.

The article, as I see it, is about internal violence, based on wrong thinking, which then leads to external violence and abuse. Change the thinking and the violence/abuse goes “poof”.

P.S. I was glad to hear of your converstation with your daughter (from the last page). It’s wonderful to reconnect with the vital dropped threads of our life, isn’t it? Sometimes painful at first, but who knows what may come of it? Besides, it is your tapestry.

FoFion, as my cat Tina was reading your interview, comfortably laying close to me on the table (right under the warm cone of light from the lamp as cats often do), she repeatedly nodded approvingly.
Many thanks for the scoop from both of us!

Think about what you want. The aim of an esoteric school is to help its students create a self separate from the body that can ultimately survive physical death. This is not a small aim. Remember that nothing worth having IS GIVEN EASILY.

We all have flashes of the higher self, when we see ourselves as if from the outside, when we are aware of what we are not ordinarily aware of, when we are present.

The great Sufi Al-Ghazali wrote, “The self is in need of alertness at every moment.” The question is: How can you prolong these flashes of being present and have them more often?

“The self is in need of alertness at every moment,” except in those moments when I’m predicting the end of the world, inviting you into my bedroom, and suggesting that you spiritually lost if you refuse, lying to you about my personal agendas, and hiding the truth about the FOF. In those moments, a complete lack of alertness is better.

People with similar background get together but there is no concerted action here nor was there ever any in the Fellowship. That is alright to acknowledge. To be alone does not hamper one’s being. To raise our selves above the personal background and meet with the individual within each other will help us meet the human but we are way away from that.

We are afraid of each other as if our joys and sorrows were not the same. The decadence of our cultures has rendered us all “spiritually homeless” and we are afraid of sharing the same space. Wars render people homeless enough that they are made to share the same space. No one wants war but war arises where people have not learnt to share or connect.

You should have seen us in the Fellowship! It is such an amazing experiment! Beautiful people from many countries but all focused on getting a little bit of air from Robert convinced that no where else was it possible to breathe. He convinced us that the air we’d been breathing all our lives was poisoned and that we could only breathe the American Way of Life a la Robert Burton. If he wanted to manipulate Italians, then it was the Italian way of life. Russians, then the Russian were “a la mode”, Latins, then even the Aztecs became interesting!

One of the difficulties we have on the blog is that life in the Fellowship is very different for Americans than for people from other countries. They continue to have social guarantees that the rest of us don’t, didn’t. Many of us give up, gave up everything to be in the Fellowship. The commitment was, is, for many, a spiritual commitment first and then the acceptance and modifications of one’s way of life as a sacrifice convinced that friendship will, would eventually develop in “The Fellowship of “Friends””. It is amazing how much the name alone held so much hope. Friendship, community, human consciousness or solidarity amongst people with the aim to live a more conscious life than the one we’d left.

As years passed, (pass) and it is clear that there is nothing of that in the Fellowship, that everyone is running their own lost battle against his own self, his own “lower self” and the meagre bits of acknowledgement that Robert might give anyone, it is not surprising that people settled where they could in that hierarchy of absurdity. The Fellowship is a microcosmic replica of life itself but deformed into an evil caricature in which it is forbidden to laugh!

Fellowship Americans cannot really understand the devotion with which a student from India sells a house that took him all his life to pay for to buy a ticket to the states and meet Robert. You should have seen people come to Renaissance after tremendous sacrifices and find no reception. None. Once a young Mexican lady, when we could still speak, for no one who’d been there long enough dared express such things, said something like, “You are my heroes. I’ve come here with the full energy of a dream come true and would like to hear you speak” but she had to settle for the other Mexicans that talked to her.

Of course, if you had a lot of money and similar behaviour the national barriers were quickly overcome.

Another Mexican lady gave her children up so that she could come to Renaissance (Isis, Oregon House). By the time I met her she spoke of herself as someone who was not meant to have children. They were “unnatural” to her. In reality her social condition was not so easy that she could have travelled to Renaissance with her children and she convinced herself, using the Fellowship’s outlook on “biological families” that she was not a “good enough mother”. Those were her words and she said them with some pride. “She” had understood!

Fellowship Americans made enormous sacrifices of a different kind. Many did not have children. Their children were the members who they indoctrinated. As long as the indoctrinated adults behaved submissively “friendly” they helped them get jobs on salary or granted them special little privileges. Independent people who did not need of these favours were not welcomed. What is interesting is that all the while, they were trying to build a community in their own terms and in their terms of individuality and superiority community was impossible. They tried to get friends, “followers” protected by their position in relation to Robert and his support or the little privileges he gave them and deepened the idolatry towards him so that they could justify their own actions.

They wanted for themselves what most of us wanted: to be loved, to be a part of a society with equal guarantees and opportunities. One in which not only money was acknowledged, not only money and sex but the fact that most of us, coming from no matter where, were willing to give everything we had. That was never recognized. All our effort, all our love, all our life! What is ironic is that the Americans that were already there thought that they had already given all their effort, all their love and all their life and it was time someone started paying them for it. Robert wasn’t going to do so so they had to start using the newcomers to find a little love or a lot of money or anything that would not let them die in the suffocating gold alchemy boundaries of a world without life. They fed on us because Robert had already starved them. But fed without giving anything back, just like him and reducing each other to a non-living environment of fixed forms and presence-less sharing. All dressed in our little silk uniforms, moving in line like the others to our non-existence.

What people are so afraid of acknowledging is that they were capable of reducing our lives to such an impoverished condition. They are afraid of how easy it is to reach that level of decadence and corruption and make it still look “human” as if a few roses and a silk dress were enough to humanize rape.

As long as the Daily Cardiac’s of the Fellowship cannot acknowledge their own poverty and the harm they’ve imposed on many and think they can come here and justify their acts with more Fellowship dogma to ease the minds of those still trying to preserve a bit of integrity where there is none, we will be separate. We cannot rebuild on the same ground in which the Fellowship still stands. You cannot institutionalize rape as a legitimate form of life under no matter what doctrine.

Ellen, thanks. What Ghandi showed was that one does not annihilate the other. On the contrary, he proved that one could “incarnate” the other, that is, that you can participate socially and still live an enlightened inner life. That is The Way of Life. What the Fellowship pretended was that people annihilate themselves as social beings and develop only their inner self as if you could keep the heart running without the blood. Inner work in the Fellowship means that you do not question the status quo and promote the rape and extortion that goes on full time. Cults in fact pretend the same thing in a big scale. As long as people are busy in their little cults, people in power can get on with their own agenda!

Don’t you find that interesting? It does not matter to those in power if those in cults rape or abuse each other as long as they keep busy with their personal little conflict so that they don’t address the bigger issue of humanity and its purpose, the Earth and its purpose, which is exactly the same as in any cult, factory or university but in a microscopic dimension. Then they can go out and invade other countries while people like us argue about the meaning and value of consciousness! Or whether it’s right or wrong to stop cults from raping its members.

We cannot not be and be at the same time. One of the tragedies of Cults is that even the guru is a poor renegade who made up a little world of his own to compensate for the fact that he did not perceive himself human enough to play in the real world.

Thanks for mentioning my daughter. My well being is directly dependent on the health of that connection. Of all connections in fact and hence the suffering but it’s been years since she’s dominated the pulse of my heart. Again, the Fellowship taught that we were to separate from that suffering rather than heal it but I know today that keeping the connections alive and well is what’s worth the effort without compromising my integrity. I make many mistakes of course, but at least I apologize and keep trying.

I just read 162 Laura, thank you, that is the most important material that has appeared here for us to understand how it worked.

It explains more about the enablers than anything else I’d read. The enablers and us. It helps me understand Girard. It is the saddest aspect of that reality. They, he, suffers exactly like that. It is why I keep saying that they all need help. We all do but those inside are suffering all those effects and creating those causes.

yes Elena, the following passage seems to apply so well to the Girard you have been describing, I immediately thought of him too

Totalitarian strategy covers inner chaos and conflict by the strict order of the police state. So does the compulsive schizophrenic patient, by his inner routine and schedules. These routines and schedules are a defense against painful occurrences in external reality. This internal robotization may lead to denial of internal realities and internal needs as well. The citizen of Totalitaria, repressing and rejecting his inner need for freedom, may even experience slavery as liberation.

BTW: For any former FoF member (or anyone interested) located in Northern Europe, who still feels unsettled and funky about their FoF experience, I’d highly recommend jumping into a Big Mind workshop with Genpo Roshi. He has developed a tool for accessing, acknowledging and integrating the many voices of the human being – from shadowed to sublime. My own experience of a 9 day retreat one year ago was transformative. He is coming to London for the weekend of January 24-25.http://www.bigmind.org/Events.html

“As long as the Daily Cardiac’s of the Fellowship cannot acknowledge their own poverty and the harm they’ve imposed on many and think they can come here and justify their acts with more Fellowship dogma to ease the minds of those still trying to preserve a bit of integrity where there is none, we will be separate.”

If you join a monastery to become a monk (Christian) you leave also your family of origin and you will give a dowry to the monastery.

According to the orientation of the order you will work and undergo (let’s hope so) a spiritual development.

But it is in most cases a true community. If you leave the monastery/convent your dowry will be sold out. Your work for the monastery was your gift. The order helps to get off and stays in contact if you like it. You are not ostracized.

The families of origin are allowed to stay in contact and if the monk or nun dies the origin family is allowed to visit the monastery/convent and to stay in contact with e.g. the mother superior etc.!

In our family was a nun who died some years ago and the whole family has and had a wonderful contact for decades with her and the order.

Some orders work with missionary zeal that’s often complicated.

What I like most in the monastery is the silence and it’s potential.

My personal attitude concerning spirituality/ faith is, it doesn’t matter what you are believing, it is the heart of a human being that makes it possible to look through the surface…and that is a possibility to make room for a real exchange.

What I regret concerning the new FOF-candidates is what you mentioned, Elena:

They (the students) are willing to give or better to sacrifice everything to undergo a spiritual development but it is really a trap and the students from Russia, India…(no money) are urged to end up somewhere in the gutter if they try to analyse the system.

Robert, Girard, DC etc. are putting up with the disaster of their “beloved?” students without conscience.

elena,
i can appreciate your need to ‘vent’ — you have a right to your indignation regarding the fof and i think it’s healthy to express the outrage… to a point… your occasional outbursts railing against former students for inaction or whatever, this imo might go over the edge, that’s even understandable…. but i will have to take exception to some of the comments and thinking in your post 185…. i’m feeling some misdirected resentment in this post…. i think when you try to define individual experiences of the fof in nationalistic terms and ‘categories’ it’s misguided… it is an error to say: “Fellowship Americans cannot really understand the devotion with which a student from India sells a house that took him all his life to pay for to buy a ticket to the states and meet Robert.” as an american, nay as a human being who was there, i will say that i completely understand the devotion that was showered on this monster!! i sacrificed a child to IT!!! someone may have sold a house, from wherever, be it india, mexico, russia or the moon… but for a while, we all sold our souls, that’s something as a human being of whatever stripe, i can REALLY understand. tear down the walls…

I appreciate your expressing yourself in regard to this issue and accept the discomfort it produces in you. I know, as well as you do, that Americans did actually sacrifice them selves as much or more than the rest of us since it was from them that the first sacrifices were demanded by Robert. It was they who first gave up their children, their jobs, their lives. They then applied the same torture on the rest of us.

I think it is important that the whole reality of what happened to all of us is recognized so that we stop pretending that these is just a little insignificant cult that can continue to function because it is supposed to be legal and because the harms are not violent enough. As we recognize how violently raped each part of ourselves was, we will be able to understand that Cults like the Fellowship cannot continue to function unchecked. That is the aim and point I am trying to make because the reticence with which so many exmembers are unwilling to take a stand against the Fellowship only reveals the extent to which they have not understood the degree of criminality in which we are involved.

In breaking news in the Madoff case the judge ruled that Madoff could not run for president in the next elections but will open a new esoteric school by the name of “The Ponzi of Friends”. (Friends meaning only those with $10,000,000 may apply).

The school under tight regulations will have 3 perspective meetings:
The first will be How to move money between friends while you put your hand in the middle, depending on body types while doing the sequence and self observation.
The second is how to move the same money but amongst 10 of your friends at a time applying the laws of 3 and 7.
The 3rd is how to move money amongst 100 of your friends at a time applying scale and relativity.
The news of the new esoteric school spread quickly and reached the ears of Blagojevich the governor of Illinois. He just sold a senator seat for $11,000,000 and was quite qualified for new school. He initially wanted to contribute the money from the sale to a Poor Children Charity in Bangladesh but decided that he will benefit more from attending the new esoteric school.
Soon enough the phone was ringing off the hook. One of the calls was from one G.W. Bush who was a president and wrote a book “How to fool a nation and run it to the ground” he was an expert in ducking while shoes have been thrown at you and there is even a game online created to teach you how.
The new elect Obama, when he heard of the new school decided to apply tight regulations and appointed Bill Clinton whom just finished building a library to honor Monika. His main job will be to make sure all female applicants will be with the size of 40 -24 40.
It is a no brainer that these kinds of schools will benefit the nation and probably take it out of a recession quickly.

In breaking news the congress decided not to give the bail out money (your tax money) to head of banks and auto industries but to send the CEOs to the new esoteric school “The Ponzi of Friends”. It will be a win, win, win situation and money will be used for education rather then been blown in the wind.

Ton 194 “…. i think when you try to define individual experiences of the fof in nationalistic terms and ‘categories’ it’s misguided… it is an error to say: “Fellowship Americans cannot really understand the devotion with which a student from India sells a house that took him all his life to pay for to buy a ticket to the states and meet Robert.” as an american, nay as a human being who was there, i will say that i completely understand the devotion that was showered on this monster!! i sacrificed a child to IT!!! someone may have sold a house, from wherever, be it india, mexico, russia or the moon… but for a while, we all sold our souls, that’s something as a human being of whatever stripe, i can REALLY understand. tear down the walls…”

Back again. Please Ton, bear in mind that I am not answering only you but the attitudes on the blog and in the Fellowship.

“Tear down the walls”? What do you think I’ve been doing here since I started writing? It is not I who’ve been separating myself from you, it is you who have remained separate to what I’ve presented responding with indifference or mockery, ostracism or rejection. I am not saying anything today that I did not say the first day, we have simply verified it with deeper understanding.

I’m afraid I must insist on the point: if Americans realized the level of criminality of the Fellowship of Friends they would be acting against it more seriously. What keeps them from perceiving that level of criminality? Who are ex-members protecting when they are unwilling to sign the petition? Who are the main enablers? Why and how do they justify what they are doing?

Do you know that one of the ways they justify what they are doing is stating, with a similar tone that someone spoke about Russia here recently, that it is not that the Russians are being raped, it is that they are whores. Could anyone here explain where that mentality is coming from? Let’s suppose we were talking about whores that had been hired in the streets of St. Petersburg, tell me, does that justify the support in a so called School of Consciousness? That’s one point I would appreciate considering. We can take this issue all the way down the road to the fact that most American members have condoned the behaviour until Robert asked a very dear member to let his son work in the Galleria and he said “NO” and has finally left the Fellowship. We are not human enough until we can respond for those we don’t even know as if we were responding for our loved ones. Integrity does not limit itself to a few chosen ones, nor does consciousness.

“…with a similar tone that someone spoke about Russia here recently, that it is not that the Russians are being raped, it is that they are whores. Could anyone here explain where that mentality is coming from?”

Russia, Croatia, Romania and other “poorhouses” of Europe etc.

What I think is: Those students are so much more able to get enthusiastic because they are not grown up in a totally materialist environment. Their willingness is completely, they have no safety belt (to be similar in a certain background)

I don’t believe that all those students know what is coming if they are under the spell of Robert E. Burton. They are seduced/mesmerized like all the other ones. (It is only human to hope there will be a better future in the FOF, no naïvité).

SOULCATCHERS are those religions/cults who disembowel their members physically and mentally.

And the Russian students are completely at the mercy of the FOF-Inner-Circle if they are living at APOLLO/ISIS whatever.

USA is facing today high unemployment and guess who is in the gutter? No residence permit, nothing, living like a rat and no money to fly back…

Baba was in a good mood the following day, December 13, 1941, and reflected on the present world condition and parts played by different leaders:
Hitler plays the greatest part of all roles. His name will remain immortal for centuries. He plays a double role of hero and villain simultaneously, and so marvelously, in spite of such a burden of worries that would make anyone else crazy, and as well as being surrounded by enemies and spies that endanger his life every moment. He would have been assassinated already, but for God’s will, to enable him to play the role assigned, which he plays so creditably. Due to this divine sight on him, a sincere belief and strong conviction are created in him so that whatever he does he thinks is for the betterment and good of humanity, and is therefore right no matter how wrong it is.
Someone interrupted asking, “Does this mean he is an agent of the spirtual hierarchy?”
He is not an agent of mine, but an actor – perfect in playing the role ordained. What organizing powers he has! Look at his achievements. Fighting all alone against the whole world, against such formidable enemies as Britain, Russia and now America. Truly great!
But, on the other side, he is a fool and a madman. His colleagues – Goebbels, Goering – are hopeless and vicious. They have dragged him down.
Mentioning Winston Churchill, Baba commented:
Although not a desirable politician like Lloyd George, Churchill is the man to hold the position and grave responsibilities at the moment. But for him, England would have already surrendered to Germany. The boldness, the spirit of opposition and fight Churchill awakened, and the courage he inspired in his nation, are truly remarable achievements.
Stalin is very cunning with his big mustache. He has proved a perfect actor in this great world drama, playing his part very well, giving a most astounding stand to Hitler and the attacks of the German army on their two thounsand-mile front.
But poor wretch Mussolini – his plight is pitiable. Literally wiped out! He is now playing second fiddle to Hitler.

The wonder of it is, when at last you reach your destination, you find that you had never traveled at all! It was a journey from here to Here.

– Meher Baba

Dear Friends,

We have come to the end of a successful Winter Journey Forth. More than 90 visiting students from nearby and worldwide centers joined Apollo students during the festivities. The Journey started with the following toast at the Galleria Salon on Tuesday, December 23:

From Rainer Maria Rilke – First Duino Elegy:

“Isn’t it time

to free ourselves from the loved one,

and bear the tension

as the arrow endures the tensed string – to gather its forces

and spring to a state of being that is more than it could ever be?

For staying is nowhere.”

We know this place of tension, and we embrace it.

We see with ever greater clarity that state of being which is truly our own.

Our moments remind us with increasing insistence that staying is nowhere.

Tonight, let us toast to the mystic spring of the bow, that impels each of us on our never-ending Journey Forth

***
Robert led a total of six meetings, two teaching dinners, six breakfasts, seven large size informal dinners, three wine cellar dinners and three teaching lunches during the Journey. We enjoyed rich musical programs provided by Apollo Arts, the Orfeo, Mariachi and Mandolin Ensembles, which were supported by our talented musicians. Many students were also able to share their being through the presentations on esoteric traditions that took place at Apollo d’ Oro. Together, we welcomed the New Year, full of things that have never been seen. We truly benefited from each other’s collective Presence.

Please click on “Apollo Today” on the left hand menu bar to enjoy pictures taken during the Journey Forth events.

Journey Forth is a time to secure our gains – wordless presence. – Robert

Dragon: “Russia, Croatia, Romania and other “poorhouses” of Europe etc.

What I think is: Those students are so much more able to get enthusiastic because they are not grown up in a totally materialist environment. Their willingness is completely, they have no safety belt (to be similar in a certain background)”

I sincerely don’t believe that any Fellowship American realizes the sacrifices many people from abroad had to make to belong to the Fellowship. If they did, they would realize, far beyond the boundaries of Oregon House, the human cost of belonging to the Fellowship. They cannot conceive that while for many of them the Fellowship was an addition to their already established life, for many of us, it was the renunciation of a life and the adoption of a new one in which we were given second and third class treatment. Not only us but our children. I left my daughter because she was not only not in her country, she was in a community in which she could not participate freely and I had to hide her from being seen in events. We’d sit far from social events that took place outside so that no one would see my children. Do you realize what that meant for their upbringing?

The Fellowship was and is still for many, our all and everything. I was a victim but let me clarify that I am not talking so much for the victim, I’ve cried myself enough, but for the reality of why ex-members and Americans still inside cannot perceive the level of criminality that their own actions have reached.

Who are we talking about? Decent well-meaning people who have been working to make enough money to support themselves and the Fellowship. Who’ve never hurt anyone directly and who cannot conceive that anyone is being hurt because of their support to Robert Burton. Who, like the rest of us have much suffered in the hands of the Fellowship but continue to think that it is perfectly “normal” of a divine being to demand such sacrifices. They are the ones that say that “if he’s getting raped it must be because he’s already a whore! If she’s being exploited it must be because she doesn’t know how to keep her money in her pocket! If he’s a third class citizen, it must be because he belongs to the third world!.” They do not realize that while they are swimming in their own bowl, many of us were drowning in it for the simple fact that unlike Americans, the Fellowship demanded that we become “Americans”! and then treated us like whores!

What I’m trying to establish is that the human relationships that have become the justification of the Fellowship’s abuses are directly connected to the attitudes and values people already had outside of the Fellowship. When most of us from abroad went to live in Renaissance, we had already committed to accepting an American Teacher as our Spiritual Guide. You, for example, have no idea how difficult that was, coming from Russia or third world countries in which the study of imperialism in the life and blood of our nations is our daily bread.

Something else I think is worth acknowledging is that, unfortunately, American education does not teach Americans about the value, worth and existence of other countries and people. They cannot do that if they then need to invade them. Americans were not taught to perceive the reality of other nations and human beings on the same scale as their own nation.

One of the reasons American members do not perceive the suffering of members from abroad is that they simply don’t perceive them with the same scale of values that they perceive themselves: “if it is happening to our nationals, it is questionable, if it is happening to Russians, they are whores, if it is happening to a whore, so be it, if it’s happening to my son, it is a crime.” You don’t understand but even in Colombia, Americans are revered as human beings no matter how much damage they’ve done in our country which is termed: “their backyard”.

This is of course an exploration into our lives. I cannot say that Girard Haven, the second in command of the Fellowship of Friends, first conscious being in Robert Burton’s ladder, ever understood the devotion with which the Russian or any other students travelled for two days to come and see him in Kiev or any other country we visited. He’d even make fun of Latins with his children, in front of me and spoke about the Russians as people without boundaries in a despective tone. You think this is just Girard? I know he’s managed to hurt himself more than anybody else but isn’t he, after all, the model for the Fellowship? Why, do ex members who know that a whole generation has been put in place to go through the same ordeal that we went through, aren’t doing anything serious enough to stop it?

It has been the pattern on this blog that as long as the devil in the chair of accusations is Robert Burton then people cheer at the poster but as soon as the necessity of revealing the participation of each and everyone in the phenomenon is exposed, then silence and ostracism prevails.

We are not just talking about one man raping a few boys, we are talking about organized crime in a society of over a thousand members. I am not talking against Americans, I’m talking Americans into assuming responsibility for what they are doing against themselves and the rest of us. “Tear down the walls” and at least look at it if not us.

Nigel, I wanted to thank you for your many posts including the one you addressed to me some time back.

ya elena… you say you are not talking ‘against americans’ but your recent posts read otherwise… i understand where you are coming from, you have your subjective perspective to express… it’s based at least in large part on your negative experience with the ‘hasnamasses’ gerard, ‘conscious bob’ and their enablers the ‘american sheeple’ who are/were taken in by and support(ed) the scam, i can understand and empathize with your animosity at least in part…. but to ignore individuality by lumping everyone into a national or racial group and in the process to make grandiose generalized statements about their perceptions of the world and experiences in the fellowship, this seems to be a misdirection of anger and energy… imo. there’s a word for this mentality where i come from: it’s called bigotry. so you hate americans, i don’t expect to change your mind, your animuosity is understandable, i hate a lot of things about ‘americans’ too, but i try to treat the ‘americans’ i encounter everyday on an individual basis, many are good people, others not so much… i don’t want to belabor the issue, i think really it is beside the point so i’ll end with a sentiment: i would hope that were we to meet, you would see me as a human being first and foremost — the ‘american’ aspect is a circumstantial condition.

I remember for a few months before I was kicked out all I would ask people about was whether the work made them more happy, more fulfilled, satisfied with life, etc. Most students photographed me for the naïveté of believing that work on oneself should make your life better. Robert and the whole FoF vibe was that “suffering” was some sort of mark that C influence favored you, or you had a high level of being. I was like: “The Buddha’s one of the 44! He says clearly that waking up is the cessation of suffering!” (G. says it too: you must sacrifice your suffering)

I realized then that these people didn’t want to awaken, they wanted a Daddy.
__________________

God Laughing:

*I was told the next day by a close Israeli friend of Asaf how he and Robert sniggered about the topic you had choosen [Happiness] and how Robert laughed saying “well, at least it has -penis- in it.”

That’s fucking awesome — I’m seeing Montgomery Burns and Smithers from The Simpsons…but I got to admit that Robert’s puns are getting more clever, if more evil! I’ve been remembering a lot recently all the times I spent within Robert’s entourage, in the TV room, at lunch or a wine cellar dinner, how he would catch my eye and make this little feral grin…I always thought “that’s the look of a man #7, completely non-identified with this world,” but now it just seems to me that the smile was a “can you fucking believe I get away with this?” grin. A supreme player.
_________________

What a convenient deduction Ton. How do you compute that I married an American although I hate them? Since I don’t agree with what the rest of us did then I hate Americans! That is why I bought a house there, moved my children, married one and followed an American Teacher for seventeen years. Easy deductions not worth arguing with.

Ton, and it’s not that she studies there because we are taking advantage of cheap education, she goes to a private school. Guess we don’t connect no matter what! but I’m very happy to say everything I have to say. Seventeen years keeping all this muck under the carpet for the sake of a bunch of sick enablers and Robert Burton. It’s over, light can’t hurt you, keep smiling you people inside, it’s just photographs of your reality.

For the record, nothing describes the Fellowship better than the following post. Everything I’ve written here is just an adornment to this reality. It synthesises what I saw better than I’ve ever been able to describe.

162. lauralupa – January 11, 2009
back to the subject of individual freedom and totalitarianism.
the following excerpts are from:
THE RAPE OF THE MIND: The Psychology of Thought Control, Menticide, and Brainwashing, by Joost A. M. Meerloo, M.D., published in 1956, World Publishing Company. (Out of Print)
found at: http://www.ninehundred.net/control/mc-ch6.html

Any form of leadership, if unchecked by controls, may gradually turn into dictatorship. Being a leader, carrying great power and responsibility for other people’s lives, is a monumental test for the human psyche. The weak leader is the man who cannot meet it, who simply abdicates his responsibility. The dictator is the man who replaces the existing standards of justice and morality by more and more private prestige, by more and more power, and eventually isolates himself more and more from the rest of humanity. His suspicion grows, his isolation grows, and the vicious circle leading to a paranoid attitude begins to develop.

The dictator is not only a sick man, he is also a cruel opportunist. He sees no value in any other person and feels no gratitude for any help he may have received. He is suspicious and dishonest and believes that his personal ends justify any means he may use to achieve them. Peculiarly enough, every tyrant still searches for some self-justification. Without such a soothing device for his own conscience, he cannot live.

His attitude toward other people is manipulative; to him, they are merely tools for the advancement of his own interests. He rejects the conception of doubt, of internal contradictions, of man’s inborn ambivalence. He denies the psychological fact that man grows to maturity through groping, through trial and error, through the interplay of contrasting feelings. Because he will not permit himself to grope, to learn through trial and error, the dictator can never become a mature person. But whether he acknowledges them or not, he has internal conflicts, he suffers somewhere from internal confusion. These inner “weaknesses” he tries to repress sternly; if they were to come to the surface, they might interfere with the achievement of his goals.
…
In Totalitaria, the citizen no longer knows the real core of his mind. He no longer feels himself an “I”, an ego, a person. He is only the object of official barrage and mental coercion. Having no personality of his own, he has no individual conscience, no personal morality, no capacity to think clearly and honestly. He learns by rote, he learns thousands of indoctrinated facts and inhales dogma and slogans with every breath he draws. He becomes an obedient pedant, and pedantry makes people into something resembling pots filled with information instead of individuals with free, growing personalities.

Becoming wiser and freer implies selective forgetting and changes of mind. This we accept, this we leave behind. Alert adjustment requires a change of patterns, the capacity to be de-conditioned, to undo and unlearn in order to become ripe for new patterns. The citizen of Totalitaria has no chance for such learning through unlearning, for growth through individual experience. Official oversimplifications induce the captive audience into acceptance and indoctrination.
…
In Totalitaria, there is no faith in fellow men, no “caritas,” no love, because real relationships between men do not exist, just as they do not exist between schizophrenics. There is only faith in and subjection to the feeding system, and there is in every citizen a tremendous fear of being expelled from that system, a fear of being totally lost, comparable with the schizophrenic’s feeling of rejection and fear of reality. In the midst of spiritual loneliness and isolation, there is the fear of still greater loneliness, of more painful isolation. Without protective regulations from the outside, internal hell may break lose. Strong mechanical external order must be used to cover the internal chaos and approaching breakdown.

We have had experience in postwar years with several refugees from the totalitarian world who broke down when they had to cope with a world of freedom where personal initiative was required. The fear of freedom brought them to a state of panic. They no longer had strong enough egos to build and maintain their defenses against the competitive demands of free democratic reality.

As in schizophrenia, a maneuverable and individual ego cannot exist in Totalitaria. In schizophrenia the ego shrinks as a result of withdrawal; in Totalitaria, as a result of constant merging in mass feelings. If such a shrunken ego should grow up, with its own critical attitude, its needs for verification of facts and for understanding, it would then be beaten down as being treacherous and nonconforming.
…
Totalitarianism is man’s escape from the fearful realities of life into the virtual womb of the leader. The individual’s actions are directed from this womb — from the inner sanctum. The mystic center is in control of everything; man need no longer assume responsibility for his own life. The order and logic of the prenatal world reign. There is peace and silence, the peace of utter submission. The members of the womb state do not really communicate; between them there is silence, the silence of possible betrayal, not the mature silence of reticence and reservedness.

Totalitaria increases the gap between the things one shows and communicates and the things one secretly dreams and thinks deep within oneself. It develops the artificial split-mindedness of political silence. Whatever little remains of individual feeling and opinion is kept carefully enclosed. In the schizophrenic world of Totalitaria, there is no free mutual exchange, no conversation, no exclamation, no release from emotional tension. It is a world of silent conspirators. Indeed, the atmosphere of suspicion is the big attacker of mental freedom because it makes people cling together, conspiring against mysterious enemies — first from outside, then among themselves.
…
The need to find conspiracies, to discover persecutors and criminals is another schizophrenic manifestation. It is psychologically related to an infantile need for a feeling of omnipotence. Megalomaniac feelings grow better in an atmosphere of mysterious secrecy. Secrecy and conspiracy increase the delusion of power. That is why so many people like to pry into other people’s lives and to play the spy.

This feeling of conspiracy also lies behind the pathological struggle with imaginary persecutors, a struggle we find both in mentally ill individuals and in our mythical Totalitaria. “It is there!” “It is chasing us!” All the inner fears of losing the nirvanic womb-illusion become rampant. Mysterious ghosts and vultures chase people out of nirvana and paradise.

In these fantasies, the patriarch, the dictator, the idol, becomes both the universal danger and the omnipotent savior at the same time. Not even the citizens of Totalitaria really love this cruel giant. Suspicion against the breast that feeds and the hand that guides and forbids is often found in the fantasy of schizophrenic children, who experience the nourisher as the enemy, the dominating ogre, bribing the growing mind into submission.

The deep hate the sick individual feels toward the parental figure cannot be expressed directly, and so it is displaced onto the self or onto scapegoats. Scapegoatism is also part of the totalitarian strategy. As we pointed out before, the scapegoat temporarily absorbs all the individual’s inner fury and rage. Kulaks, Negroes, Jews, Communists, capitalists, profiteers, and warmongers — any or all of them can play that role. Perhaps the greatest dangers, to the totalitarian mind, is the use of intellect and awareness and the “egg-head’s” demand for free, verifying thinking. Aberration and perversion are chosen by the citizens of Totalitaria, as they are by the inhabitants of madhouses, over the tiring, intellectual control.

In the center of the totalitarian fears and fantasies stands the man-eating god and idol. He is unconquerable. He uses man’s great gift of adjustment to bring him to slavery. Every man’s inner core of feelings and thoughts has to belong to the leader.

Is the citizen of Totalitaria consciously aware of this? Probably not. Modern psychology has taught us how strongly the mental mechanism of denial of reality works. The eye bypasses external occurrences when the mind does not want them to happen. Secondary justifications and fantasies are formed to support and explain these denials. In Totalitaria we find the same despising of reality facts as we do in schizophrenia. How else are we to explain the fact that Hitler was still moving his armies on paper after they were already defeated?

Totalitarian strategy covers inner chaos and conflict by the strict order of the police state. So does the compulsive schizophrenic patient, by his inner routine and schedules. These routines and schedules are a defense against painful occurrences in external reality. This internal robotization may lead to denial of internal realities and internal needs as well. The citizen of Totalitaria, repressing and rejecting his inner need for freedom, may even experience slavery as liberation. He may go even one step further — yearn for an escape from life itself, a delusion that he could become omnipotent through utter destruction.
…
This all sounds like a bitter comedy, but the fantasy of schizophrenics has taught us how the mind can retreat into delusion when there is a fear of daily existence. Under these circumstances, fantasy begins to prevail over reality, and soon assumes a validity which reality never had. The totalitarian mind is like the schizophrenic mind; it has a contempt for reality. Think for a moment of Lysenko’s theory and its denial of the influence of heredity. The totalitarian mind does not observe and verify its impressions of reality; it dictates to reality how it shall behave, it compels reality to conform to its fantasies.

The comparison between totalitarianism and psychosis is not incidental. Delusional thinking inevitably creeps into every form of tyranny and despotism. Unconscious backward forces come into action. Evil powers from the archaic past return. An automatic compulsion to go on to self-destruction develops, to justify one mistake with a new one; to enlarge and expand the vicious pathological circle becomes the dominating end of life. The frightened man, burdened by a culture he does not understand, retreats into the brute’s fantasy of limitless power in order to cover up the vacuum inside himself. This fantasy starts with the leaders and is later taken over by the masses they oppress.

What else can man do when he is caught in that tremendous machine called Totalitaria? Thinking — and the brain itself — has become superfluous, that is, only reserved for the elite. Man has to renounce his uniqueness, his individual personality, and must surrender to the equalizing and homogenizing patterns of so-called integration and standardization. This arouses in him that great inner emptiness of the savage child, the emptiness of the robot that unwittingly years for the great destruction.

nueba reporter, are you a FoFion reincarnation or just another genius of parody? whoever you are, :.)

ton, to continue on our little creative vs totalitarian mindset thread, which I find most fascinating, here is another great example of controversial art.
tough food for a cult member to chew?

THE Czech animated-film director, visual artist, and surrealist Jan Švankmajer is one of the most remarkable filmmakers of the last three decades. The influential French film journal Positif considers him, together with the famous Russian animator Yuri Norstein (Tale of Tales), “a giant of contemporary film.” The British film critic Julian Petley calls him, along with the Polish directors Jan Lenica and Walerian Borowczyk, “…one of the key animators to have emerged in Eastern Europe since the war.” Born in 1934, the sixty-years-old director embarked on his filmmaking career in 1964; since then, he has made more than twenty films, mostly shorts. His works are regularly featured at major international competitions, including Annecy, Berlin, Cannes, Mannheim, Toronto, and Oberhausen. For his films, Švankmajer has received over thirty festival prizes and honours.
Unfortunately, Švankmajer’s philosophically profound, visually rich and stylistically innovative work is little known beyond the relatively narrow circle of well-informed or specialized audience. In his native Czech Republic, the distribution of most of his films was suspended shortly after the 1968 Soviet-led invasion of Czechoslovakia and for the rest of the 1968-1989 period, it was severely restricted; Švankmajer’s bizarre, often grotesque style and his surrealist perspective were politically undesirable in the post-invasion atmosphere of cultural repression.

Although the director was never officially banned in his country, his opportunities to shoot in Czech studios (all of them state-run and state-controlled) were minimal and consequently, he worked with considerable difficulties; several of his scripts could not be realized. As well, little if any critical writing on his work was published in Czechoslovakia between 1971-1989. For example, in one of the rare references to his work, the Czech national film monthly Film a doba (October 1988) granted the filmmaker a total of 33 words.

of course to create something like that you need to be able to think indipendently, to have a free spirit, to use your creative gift and to only obey your own laws
– which is very scary to the dictator-king-preacher-guru who wants everyone else to simply follow His laws and proclaims

“Isn’t it time
to free yourselves from the loved one,
and bear the tension
as the arrow endures the tensed string – to gather its forces
and spring to a state of being that is more than it could ever be?
For staying is nowhere.”

”Hypermnesia: A Vigilant Trance State
In essence, hypermnesia is created out of what I call “resisted forgetfulness”. The hypermnesic is afraid of the consequences of not remembering, of not being vigilant. The need to remember everything is based on a terrible fear of the consequences of forgetting even one little thing. Of course, when you resist forgetting, you get more forgetful.”

This suggests to me that the more you are indoctrinated in the Cult Trance to ‘try’ and remember yourself, the more you end up forgetting yourself, acting against your own self-interest, no matter what your nationality.

About the happiness thread. Actually that meeting topic emerged from a simple comment that a friend of mine had made. He had said, “…our sense of happiness is based 90% on the state of our instinctive center and about 10% on the state of our emotional center.”

At the time the comment struck me to be profoundly true, as the disease of my nervous system (MS) had been vigorously disturbing my normal sense “happiness” for the (then) previous five years or so. It had been an eye opening experience: I had found that it was possible to physically feel like shit, but not fully participate in that shit emotionally, notice the sensations (or lack of them) and the emotions, but of necessity, not a buffer, avoid the big self-pity trip (which does have many subtle sides to it). So my interest was – and it seemed possible – to reverse those percentages in our daily experience of living – and let the mysterious interplay of “higher centers/higher states” take care of themselves (as they do).

I now understand things differently, with less categorization, but no less understanding of the energetic threads that weave “my” life. And a formulation occurred to me this morning that kinda sums up the RB side of things which also relates to the post from Somebody, #201. Here it is (drum roll, please):Robert does not understand the essential qualities of the Self.

He can – and does – do outrageous things, so that any sincere member may try to hold on with all their might, trying not to identify, because they know that non-identification is right. And it is right – relatively. “And you know that she’s half crazy – but that’s why you want to be there…”Yet, Robert does not understand the essential qualities of the Self.

And what are the essential qualities of the Self? Find out for yourself (if you want), because it always lies within your own experience.

Looking at the two levels of inspiration a human being realizes possibly that the constant change of body, thoughts and emotions are of prime importance for the insight that there is NO possibility to build up or to have a real I.

To give up this idea/I(really), gives a profound peace to the human being who is able to LIVE that, you feel constantly relaxed. Those people are balm for the soul of their environment because they create space for their fellow men.

TO gain this insight is something like WORK. On the way to this level you ARE NOT constantly happy and you may feel also destructive emotions, like little waves in the sea, but if you realize the whole sea is so much more beside MY LITTLE EGOISTIC emotions and wishes (to obtain consciousness e.g.) you will be able to free your self, really.

That is the first RELEASE for you, the first step (you are still on the way….). After the first level you may try to overcome all the other difficulties in our lives, you are going now the way towards openness/”letting in” in your mind.

You will be able to endure e.g. verbal injuries, you are no longer a target of attack, you are able to master FEAR.

This second level is also a long way.

Walter Tanner, I guess you know all those thoughts and you may label them with “the way of the Buddha” etc.

It is not of interest to divide the former/current/Russian/American FOF-members but it is of interest to NAME the experiences with the FOF and to MARK the BORDER!

Why should OTHER young or older people experience the esoteric school of the FOF?

When in disgrace with fortune and men’s eyes,
I all alone beweep my outcast state,
And trouble deaf Heaven with my bootless cries,
And look upon my self, and curse my fate,
Wishing me like to one more rich in hope,
Featur’d like him, like him with friends possessed,
Desiring this man’s art, and that man’s scope,
With what I most enjoy contented least;
Yet in these thoughts myself almost despising,
Haply I think on thee,- and then my state
(Like to the lark at break of day arising
From sullen earth) sings hymns at heaven’s gate;
For thy sweet love remember’d such wealth brings,
That then I scorn to change my state with kings.

‘new school decided to apply tight regulations and appointed Bill Clinton whom just finished building a library to honor Monika. His main job will be to’ appoint without fingers and over see all blow jobs.

‘It will be a win, win, win situation and money will be used for education rather th[a]n been blown in the wind.’
should be
‘It will be a win, win, win situation and money will be used for sex education and blow jobs in the wind.’

“I realized then that these people didn’t want to awaken, they wanted a Daddy.”

My realization as well, however, it took me quite a while after I had left to come to it. I am saddened when I think of all the years that I discounted my ecstatic experiences solely on the basis of Bob’s misinterpretation of fourth way doctrine. I remember a meeting that traveling teacher Rob_rt T_yl_r began by intoning, in his most majesterial voice, “If one wishes to progress in the work one must abandon the ideas of happiness and peace.” What a wonderful meeting that was, as a group of fairly contented, middle-class suburban professionals tried to come to grips with the fact they were not flagellating themselves intensely enough to awaken.

I now look for ecstasy in every waking moment. I leave a seat at the table for magic, everyday. I am no longer looking for a daddy, however, I am also no longer looking to awaken.

My Dear Love and often hated friend,
I have finally found a material that could help you if you bothered to help yourself.

At first glance, I had thought it a little too far fetched to put cults side to side to prison camps but after two years of looking at material none of the medical research is as close to the phenomenon I observed in the Felllowship of Friends as the parallels between totalitarian environments and cults.

I will try to point out the parallels even at the risk of being too obvious. Apparently it is not as obvious to many and I am myself just discovering them.

It is a long piece of work. Pieces are taken from the post offered by Laura: The Rape of the Mind. I’ll mark my additions with a line at the beginning of the paragraph.

“And fear not them which kill the body, but are not able to kill the soul.” -Matthew 10:28

_____But beware of those who kill the soul and leave the body intact.

This book attempts to depict the strange transformation of the free human mind into an automatically responding machine a transformation which can be bought about by some of the cultural undercurrents in our present day society as well as by deliberate experiments in the service of a political ideology.
_____or Cult

The rape of the mind and stealthy mental coercion are among the oldest crimes of mankind. They probably began back in pre historic days wheh man first discovered that he could exploit human qualities of empathy and understanding in order to exert power over his fellow men. The word “rape” is derived from the Latin word _rapere_, to snatch, but also is related to the words to rave and raven. It means to overwhelm and to enrapture, to invade, to usurp, to pillage and to steal.

The modern words “brainwashing,” “thought control,” and “menticide” serve to provide a clearer conception of the actual methods by which man’s integrity can be violated. When a concept is given its right name, it can be more easily recognized and it is with this recognition that the opportunity for systematic correction begins.

In this book the reader will find a discussion of some of the imminent dangers which threaten free cultural interplay. It emphasizes the tremendous cultural implication of the subject of enforced mental intrusion. Not only the artificial techniques of coercion are important but even more the unobtrusive intrusion into our feeling and thinking. The danger of destruction of the spirit may be compared to the threat of total physical destruction through atomic warfare. Indeed, the two are related and intertwined.

My approach to this subject is based on the belief that it is only by looking at any problem from several angles that we are able to get at its heart.

According to Bohr’s principle of complementarity, the rather simple phenomena of physics can be looked at from diverse viewpoints; different and seemingly contrasting concepts are needed to describe physical phenomena. For instance, for explanation of the behaviour of electrons, both the concept of particle and the concept of wave are useful. The same is true for the even more complicated psychological and social interactions. We cannot look at brainwashing merely from a simple Pavlovian viewpoint. This book tries to do it also from the clinical descriptive view and from the concept of psychology; it tries to look at brainwashing from the standpoint that general mental coercion may belong to every human interaction.

Communication of any sort can almost be compared with trying to knock down a row of dolls in a throwing game. The more balls we throw, the greater is the probability that we may hit all the dolls. The more approaches we make to any problem, the greater chance we have of finding and grasping its essential core. Such detailed treatment will be impossible without some repetition in the text.
In this book we shall move from the specific subject of planned and deliberate mental coercion to the more general question of the influences in the modern world that tend to robotize and automatize man. The last chapters are devoted to the problem of inner backbone, as a first step in the direction of learning to maintain OUR MENTAL FREEDOM.

One of the great Dutch authors, Multatuli, wrote a letter to his friend excusing himself because the letter was so long: he had not had time enough to write a shorter one. In this paradox he expressed part of the problem of all search for expression and communication. It takes a long time to express an idea in a precise and communicable way. Yet being short and simple in one’s descriptions is not always appreciated. Expecially modern psychology is loaded with superlearnedness with the secret intention of leaving the reading public awe stricken. The man who tries to express himself in simple words, bypassing jargon, risks being called popular and unscientific. Nevertheless, I am aware of the fact that I have been so much steeped in psychological terminology that I cannot completely forego psychological language. The real test of psychological clarity is the way the layman absorbs and understands the ideas communicated. My aim has been to write for the general public, not to popularize but to bring some order to the chaos of our particular epoch.

Every word man speaks is a plagiarism. The task of an author is to absorb, incorporate, and transform the knowledge and emotional currents of his own epoch and to present them in his own personal way, enriched by his own experiences. I am grateful, indeed, to all those whose ideas I have been able to borrow, and especially to all those who inspired me to write down my own thoughts on this controversial subject.
J.A.M.M. January, 1956

…the paradox of the more you ‘try’ to become awake, the more asleep you become.

IMO this is an underlying factor in why well-meaning and intelligent people become hopelessly enmeshed in cults like the Fellowship of Friends AKA Pathway to Presence for so many years.

An example of how this works in reverse is a simple trick I learned many years ago from a follower of Transcendental Meditation. If any of you have sat in meditation for any long period of time, then you have noticed that eventually all that self-consciousness will bring little annoying skin itches into your awareness. The more you ‘try’ to ignore them, the more distracting they become, right? When you break down and scratch one, then in a few minutes another appears somewhere else on your skin and the saga continues. The trick to transcend them is to apply the following paradox. When you sense the itch, as you count from one to ten, make the itch worse. Amplify it by focusing all your attention and say quietly to yourself, “Ok itch get worse, one…getting more itchy now, two…more and more itchy…three…and so on. At the count of ten you then tell the itch, “Now go away”. For me that works every time. Please verify it for yourself.

It is only our paralyzing fear of a symptom getting worse that makes it worse. Making it worse intentionally actually makes it get better.

This is the “law of paradoxical change” that editors Fagan and Shepard describe in the book, “Gestalt Therapy Now” (1970). From Wolinsky, “Simply put, whatever thought or emotion is completely experienced disappears into something else and the experiencer enters into a deepened state of well-being…the implication is that if you and make it worse, then you can make it better. In Rossi’s application of symptom prescription (Rossi, 1986) he explains its effectiveness in terms of ‘state dependent learning’. ‘By asking the patient to experience and worsen the symptom, we are presumably turning on right-hemispheric processes that have a readier access to the state-dependant encoding of the problem.’ This means that the therapist is this working with the actual ingredients of the problem, rather than with its rarefied, cognitive version. It is paradoxical. Intensifying the dynamic that creates symptomatology actually helps the person move out of it and into an expanded state…full of inner resources that were otherwise unavailable.”

In the non-pathological trance state of meditation and in the pathological trance state that produces symptomatology, and in the non-pathological excursions in to various ‘common everyday trances’, there is a narrowing of attention. The difference is: In the non-pathological trace states, the narrowing is voluntary and leads to an expanded awareness. I sit down and meditate by choice intentionally. In the symptomatic trace state, the narrowing is involuntary; the trance ‘pops up’ and remains the dominating characteristic. I stay in the state of shrunken attention and I identify with the contents of whatever I’m narrowing my focus of attention down to.” (One loses track of one’s self as the context, which you can regain in meditation.)

Thus, the implications for the spiritual seeker are that if you already have self-awareness in place the more you ‘try’ to be awake, the asleep you become.

So here’s the ultimate mind-bender, and probably why Ouspensky urged his followers at the end of his life to “abandon the system”…

To become more “awake” in an expanded state of self-awareness, IMO you don’t have to open your eyes wider in the “vigilant cult trance state”, but you have to actually close your eyes, “try” to be “asleep” and mediate upon the difference between what is consciousness and what is a trance.

I do at least once a day for about 20 minutes, and it helps elevate my mood considerably.

Kid Shelleen: great story about Robert Taylor, but do you really think that his proclamation that night misrepresented the Fourth Way? G. and O. were pretty cold fish as far as I can fathom, I can’t find anywhere they speak about happiness. Remember A.E. Waite’s condemnation of Ouspensky? That ‘love’ is nowhere in his system, and O. just tells Waite he’s a naïve fool to think that sleeping machines can love.

Robert Taylor would regularly crack me up. I remember my first meeting with him, in New York, he led the meeting and announced that he would play some music, and proceeded to play Gavin Bryars “Jesus’ Blood Never Failed Me Yet” with Tom Waits!

The author, Arvan Harvat, labels Gurdjieff a “vitalist Gnostic.” Here’s a good bit from the conclusion:
___________________

For all his emphasis on “investigation” and “repeatability”, Gurdjieff was, no doubt, a charismatic occultist, something of a Western Guru or Renaissance Magus like Flood reincarnated (no traces of Faustian hubris). Hence – any idea of impartial or “scientific” investigation of the “Work” is out of question. This is essentially an initiatory cult, and such secret societies shun the “outsiders”. What I find more intriguing is the following: his writings (and his conversations with pupils, as well as their works) show his lack of interest for stormy ideas that had transformed Western culture from, say, 1900 to 1940. There is no indication (apart for casual and shallow remarks) that he was acquainted (or even paid attention to ) with anything scientific above the purely technical level: relativity or quantum physics or radiation physics hadn’t made way into his work. Also, speculative ideas and artistic movements that changed his era passed him by: psychoanalysis, existentialism, phenomenology, expressionism, cubism,…Curiously enough, phenomenology’s insistence on “inauthenticity” of ordinary human life didn’t sit well with Gurdjieff. Once formed, his Weltanschauung remained essentially fixed and impenetrable (shifting accents only emphasized incongruity of his primary sources). All the talk about an all-encompassing “teaching”, spanning the spectrum from cosmology, psychology, theology. ..to chemistry, ethics, art and “evolution” evaporated in thin air. This is even more striking considering the fact that he harped on “objective art” and similar concepts. One can only ask whether he had ever heard of poor “subjectives” like Titian or Rembrandt.

My final verdict (GIG would certainly explode in a riotous laughter could he read these sentences): Gurdjieff “Work”, once important, even inspiring force, has spent itself. Ancient wisdom doctrines, transplanted and adapted to the West, do it better.
___________________

Gurdjieff also has detractors from the Western Magical tradition, and not just Crowley. The author of Meditations on the Tarot has some very cogent criticism of the sort of “higher bodies” the “work” can create. So although I find a lot of value in Harvat’s criticism, I don’t agree that anything has to be “transplanted and adapted” to the West, though, the West has its own wisdom doctrines, but you might have to look around a bit.

“We were born before the wind
Also younger than the sun
Ere the bonnie boat was won as we sailed in the mystic
Hark, now hear the sailors cry
Smell the sea and feel the sky
Let your soul and spirit fly into the mystic

And when that fog horn blows I will be coming home
And when that fog horn blows I want to hear it
I don’t have to fear it
I want to rock your gypsy soul
Just like in the days of old
Then magnificently we will float into the mystic…”
-Van Morrison

RT was my first center director and a teacher. He was the reason I joined FOF. In Russia when one said ‘Robert’ and did not add ‘Burton’, it usually means ‘Taylor’. His unusual character in Russia reads as an occult and highly developed spiritual being. The way he treated humans in general including new students had such a scale that only leaves you suspecting that he is not human at all, because even though he is seeing all stupidity and triviality of human race he perhaps bored with it but not expecting or demanding anything, like a giant cat. Or rather Mephistopheles. Not identified… He laughed at everything – students questions, interests (his famous joke was when someone mentioned that he was doing yoga to reply – yes, yogurt is very helpful), appearance (he recommended to Russian students to wash clothes if when they sniff it it stinks), etc. When my husband and I joined his wife told us that RT said that we are going to make very good students. And then he gave us an exercise which we took very seriously – to stand with your arms pointing horizontally each day for a half an hour. When we told him that the task was accoplished he did not know what we were talking about. I guess he was joking.
The meeting were more like an emotional drilling (is that the word for ‘braking’ new soldiers in the army?) One is put under the pressure to ask questions, but if the question is asked it only will be mocked and laughed at. Therefore nobody talked or shared angels at the meetings. Now I understand that we were in the trance state and RT had a very good technique for that– maybe even better than RB.

Tatyana: “Now I understand that we were in the trance state and RT had a very good technique for that– maybe even better than RB.”

People who have no scruples, no conscience, have a distinct advantage over others– but only when they gain our trust. Once they gain someone’s trust, they can “yank people’s chains” and manipulate them, and so forth — just as you describe above.

Of course, this only works until people catch on to them.

We often DON’T catch on to people like this because we don’t think critically about what they tell us, and we’re not aware that such a person might exist, partly because we may not have the same impulse ourselves. (It’s interesting that police investigators find their criminals partly by trying to think like the criminal. Cult leaders understand this, and take advantage of cult followers feeling some hesitation to ever “think like a criminal.”)

Simple formula: Begin thinking critically, and it’s not necessary to “think like a criminal”. Ask questions. Delve. And be cautious about what you believe.

Ironic isn’t it? We believed that we “believed nothing” in the fof.

RT and RB make jokes about everything and everyone but themselves. That’s one way to recognize the malignant narcissist.

I have finally found a material that could help you if you bothered to help yourself.

I’ll use ======= double lines when I want to pay special attention to a part of the text and ______ when I am making a comment.

_____The parallel between cults and totalitarian environments is probably much studied already by many but I have not seen them here yet. All the information in this text seems relevant to those of us who have endured cult life for any period of time. This is only the beginning for me but my suspicion is that while totalitarian environments apparently tend to explode at some point because the people submitted to it finally oppose it, cults tend to implode because the people who willingly submit to it, finally commit suicide. The aim of the cult to annihilate the “I” of the individual finally reaches its culminating point when the member himself takes his own life independently or with the group.

THE RAPE OF THE MIND. The Psychology of Thought Control, Menticide, and Brainwashing, by Joost A. M. Meerloo, M.D 1956

PART ONE — THE TECHNIQUES OF INDIVIDUAL SUBMISSION
The first part of this book is devoted to various techniques used to make man a meek conformist. In addition to actual political occurrences, attention is called to some ideas born in the laboratory and to the drug techniques that facilitate brainwashing. The last chapter deals with the subtle psychological mechanisms of mental submission.

______Meek conformism is what allows for the systematic rape of young men and the total surrender of the members integrity economically, emotionally and intellectually.
CHAPTER ONE — YOU TOO WOULD CONFESS
A fantastic thing is happening in our world. Today a man is no longer punished only for the crimes he has in fact committed. Now he may be compelled to confess to crimes that have been conjured up by his judges, who use his confession for political purposes. It is not enough for us to damn as evil those who sit in judgment. We must understand what impels the false admission of guilt; we must take another look at the human mind in all its frailty and vulnerability.
_____Confession in cults is a common practice. I once paid 1200 dollars for having sex out of marriage.

The Enforced Confession
During the Korean War, an officer of the United States Marine Corps, Colonel Frank H. Schwable, was taken prisoner by the Chinese Communists. After months of intense psychological pressure and physical degradation, he signed a well documented “confession” that the United States was carrying on bacteriological warfare against the enemy. The confession named names, cited missions, described meetings and strategy conferences. This was a tremendously valuable propaganda tool for the totalitarians. They cabled the news all over the world: “The United States of America is fighting the peace loving people of China by dropping bombs loaded with disease spreading bacteria, in violation of international law.”

After his repatriation, Colonel Schwable issued a sworn statement repudiating his confession, and describing his long months of imprisonment. Later, he was brought before a military court of inquiry. He testified in his own defense before that court: “I was never convinced in my own mind that we in the First Marine Air Wing had used bug warfare. I knew we hadn’t, but the rest of it was real to me the conferences, the planes, and how they would go about their missions.”

_______The whole precept of this parallel must understand the difference in the initial situation. In prison camps the people are submitted and physical coercion is the rule while in the Fellowship Cult people submit willingly and mental and emotional coercion is the rule. Both environments are especially conditioned. While in the former, “life” (probably) circles around instinctive necessities in the latter, it is channelled towards superfluous achievements that heighten the guru’s “powers” of accomplishment. (Must research this more). The rigor in either environment is nevertheless similar although in the one it is imposed while in the other it is submissive.

“The words were mine,” the Colonel continued, “but the thoughts were theirs. That is the hardest thing I have to explain: how a man can sit down and write something he knows is false, and yet, to sense it, to feel it, to make it seem real.”

_____All of Girard Haven’s work is a masterpiece of this phenomenon.

This is the way Dr. Charles W. Mayo, a leading American physician and government representative, explained brainwashing in an official statement before the United Nations: “…the tortures used…although they include many brutal physical injuries, are not like the medieval torture of the rack and the thumb screw. They are subtler, more prolonged, and intended to be more terrible in their effect.

=======They are calculated to disintegrate the mind of an intelligent victim, to distort his sense of values, to a point where he will not simply cry out ‘I did it!’ but will become a seemingly willing accomplice to the complete disintegration of his integrity and the production of an elaborate fiction.”======

_____The elaborate fiction in the Fellowship couldn’t be more pathetic than in the culmination of the rhino poo; The eternal blah, blah, blah of quotes stolen from unreachable conscious beings and the unending elaborate events in which nothing but the event happens producing the delusion that something “very important” happened where nothing happened. The physical phenomena took place but no one but the guru or enabler representing him, spoke and reinstated the reassuring doctrine that something very important is taking place, that what the members are paying for is of utmost significance and that they are receiving what only the chosen ones can receive.

The member is trapped by the “event” itself. Because it is taking place in the physical realm he deludes himself with the conviction that something truly significant is happening in his/her life.

By the way, I liked Walter’s description of RB as being a “supreme player.” Both RB and RT are players.

And actors.

Of course, RT is literally an actor, but his “role” in the fof is obviously to be “an actor” as well… Pretend, evoke, and so on. All of the things that actors do.

Beyond the money and the fun and games, one thing that hasn’t been talked about much is how the fof is a type of “stage” for some people — and particularly for RB and RT. They both get off on that. Many people in the fof do. And some of them are former members posting right here on the blog.

All they need is an audience willing to buy into it and they’ll keep up with the act.

Walter, he did the same presentation in Moscow. Really created memory. Thanks for the link, it created a higher state… how confusing! Now this blog exists because of him also. What impressed me so much that I joined – lead another person to start this blog.

Does it surprise you Art, Bruce? Weren’t we there long enough? What makes you think I or those you mention are not sick? When you talk like that I feel enormous fear. What are you going to do to me? Is someone going to get me for talking? Like in the Fellowship? For talking compulsively after being compulsively silenced? Aren’t we all actors in as much as we wish, need to participate? Aren’t your gestures actions? Are you any less actors?

Robert T.? An asshole? A victim?

The last meeting I was at with Robert leading, a small meeting in a private house, he was talking about how some people were no longer tolerable. It was a meeting on the same vein to one Girard had led in the town hall on Second line of work justifying the fact that there wasn’t any with such negative remarks that I stood up and protested shortly after it began. The tension was terrible but Girard picked it up and turned it around in seconds. I don’t remember the words but the energy. Many were there, perhaps some remember, that was about six years ago. Not long after that meetings in the town hall were reduced to quotations by the conscious beings.

It was sickening but it is clear that at some point they make up stories to justify their inability to connect, they need to justify it by condemning others. Doesn’t that happen often to regular people? But in there it was being “institutionalized”. How far are people from being nasty to others to killing them when it is justified by all of them?

I am all for exposing our lives but calling people assholes, even sick mother fuckers as I do when upset enough proves so much misunderstanding of the phenomenon. Singling people out and burning them at the stake does not reveal that we’ve come even close to grasping the dimension of the problem. Burning Robert Burton, Girard Haven, Robert T. and the rest at the stake, one by one, Elena included if you like, won’t solve the problem or help those who participated understand what happened or those who are lucky enough to never come close to a cult.

For me, or IMHO, it is first necessary to grasp the conditions in which people were in to understand how and why we became what we became. Under the absurdity of those conditions it is not surprising that the more talented the person who sold his or her soul to Robert, the more he or she succumbed to the same pattern of behavior.

I don’t think anyone was more damaging or responsible than Girard Haven but Girard Haven is nothing but a sick man, like Robert Burton, all the Roberts and the rest of the people inside in different degrees or like many of us who’ve recently left, in different degrees.

It is of no use to point at people and find culprits even though some are more responsible than others. Who could have remained beautiful in that environment? Some tried and made it easier to bear but even beauty was against us.

Do you really think Robert planned this tragedy? Girard? Do you think those people in those other cults planned a life in which they would all end up committing suicide? No one can plan that. There’s a great deal worth learning here and it can’t be burning anyone at the stake and thinking the problem is solved.

They are dangerous people, they need to be stopped, of that I am sure but stopped and helped not stopped and hurt. They are dangerous like Daily Cardiac who rationalizes it all. Robert and Girard might look like old men but the other side of them is like four years old: it never grew.

With three million Americans in Cults, and many more millions around the world, this is obviously not just our little personal problem.

ton:
You knew RT…He ran the drama octave way back before Miles left…Scottish mercury saturn wanker with dark bushy eyebrows, a deep voice, and an overactive king of clubs…also with a lovely synergy of power-dominance feature. Great cult material.

To me, REB and RT both have the same ‘aura’ – that is, they exude an overbearing energy which seems to present itself as presence, and IMHO it is instinctive energy (coupled with dominance and/or power feature). This puts students in a state of fear, and that means fear of refusing to have sex with REB!…..Nigel.

‘RT was my first center director and a teacher. He was the reason I joined FOF. In Russia when one said ‘Robert’ and did not add ‘Burton’, it usually means ‘Taylor’. His unusual character in Russia reads as an occult and highly developed spiritual being. The way he treated humans in general including new students had such a scale that only leaves you suspecting that he is not human at all, because even though he is seeing all stupidity and triviality of human race he perhaps bored with it but not expecting or demanding anything, like a giant cat. Or rather Mephistopheles.’

This person, RT mentioned, is highly developed King of Clubs and ‘spiritual being’ has little or nothing to do with the captivation you experienced. And, yes, it does give you the feeling of ‘not human at all’ once you are more familiar with the person and that territory. Becoming more human, feeling, and compassionate a person is the chief challenge for that type to achieve in order to transcend the limitations they are given to live with this lifetime. This last sentence applies equally to RT and RB. (As an aside: Sad part of it is that a heart condition is what physically ails such person(s). This fact and irony speaks truth better than any words can tell.)

“They are dangerous people, they need to be stopped, of that I am sure but stopped and helped not stopped and hurt. They are dangerous like Daily Cardiac who rationalizes it all. Robert and Girard might look like old men but the other side of them is like four years old: it never grew.

With three million Americans in Cults, and many more millions around the world, this is obviously not just our little personal problem!”

——————————————————–

Many weeks ago we enjoyed a TV-programme with the topic: The existence of the DEVIL or DEMON.

It was a high quality programme with psychiatrists, psychologists, theologians, a representative of the Islam, artists….

One of them (the name is not of importance) lectured about the mechanism of the DEMON.

His opinion is that the demon is never only one person (e.g. Robert E. Burton a single human being), it is an extensive mechanism.

This mechanism needs not only the person who gives the impetus it needs more, it needs a foundation!

As an example he told about the history of the Jews in Spain as the universal scapegoat. His picture for this demonic force is the 15. card of the tarot.

It shows (it depends on the existing designs) a demon standing on a foundation with two Persons (representing the group). The two persons are connected with a chain.

Queen Isabella of Castile and Aragon (April 22, 1451 – November 26, 1504), “the Catholic” and her husband Ferdinand proceeded with their plans to unify all of Spain by continuing a long-standing but stalled effort to expel the Moors (Muslims) who held parts of Spain.

Concurrently, Isabel also asserted royal religious authority in instituting the Spanish Inquisition(1478, her confessor pressured her to institute it), designed to find and punish religious heretics and apostates.

Its focus was those converted Jews, conversos, who still held to Jewish beliefs.
In 1492 all Jews in Spain who refused to convert to Christianity were expelled by royal edict.

She wiped out vital Jewish communities.

What was the mechanism of this demonic event?

Isabella and her confessor triggered of an avalanche.

The chase was opened and according to the 15. tarot card you need not only one or two persons and an evil idea.

The foundation, all the other persons who are connected in a state of mass hysteria (the chain). This state bears also the greatest excess, mass murder.

This avalanche is very dangerous and the decisive moment is the indoctrination with the idea.

At that point in time you have the possibility to argue against it, to stop it.

But later on the mechanism and its demonic POWER takes effect and it takes really a superhuman force to stop it.

He called this state/mechanism a “self induced religion” which triumphs over the mind and the willpower of the human beings. It is in his eyes part of an alchemistic thinking in all of us, the magic thinking: WE ARE ABLE TO GAIN THE POWER, TO WIN THE MAGIC FORMULA.
He thinks only a few people are able to see through those demonic mechanisms: ARTISTS, OLD FOLKS and other cultures with “distance” to the group.

Looking at the FOF from this aspect it clarifies how strenuous it is to stop the demonic power of the FOF but nevertheless let’s go on!

The Major Arcana (Arcana is the plural form of the Latin word Arcanum, meaning “closed” or “secret”)
which represent the original tarot deck are numbered 1 to XX1. Major Arcana is a section of twenty-two cards, each showing a universal theme (what C.G. Jung would have called an archetype).

I am quite sure Robert or his helpers are also “using” the magic thinking of the tarot.

whalerider 242
doesn’t ring a bell… maybe it’s just that it was so long ago but if RT was at the funny farm i didn’t notice or he didn’t make enough of an impression for me to remember now. i wasn’t into the ‘drama club’ thing, i have never been interested in doing any stage-acting myself… i think the drama club was newly forming just before i left… i left quite a few years before Miles did… (it was late ’83… i can still take a small degree of satisfaction in the timing because it was partly a “fuck you and fuck off” to robot… a gesture to indicate that i would no longer be kept in the fold by fear of doomsday prophecies, the dire predictions for 1984 and all the rest of his horseshit).

Thanks Dragon, that is why this text seems to put us into a bigger context and helps us understand better the mechanisms.

Text 3.
The Rape of the Mind. Excerpts from Chapter I by Joost A. M. Meerloo

Should we be able to stand the Nazi treatment, or would we also be forced to become informers? This question was being asked by anti Nazis in all the occupied countries.

During the second year of the occupation we realized that it was better not to be in touch with one another. More than two contacts were unsafe. We tried to find medical and psychiatric preventives to harden us against the Nazi torture we expected. As a matter of fact, I myself conducted some experiments to determine whether or not narcotics would harden us against pain. However, the results were paradoxical. Narcotics can create pain insensitivity, but their dulling action at the same time makes people more vulnerable to mental pressure. =======Even at that time we knew, as did the Nazis themselves, that it was not the direct physical pain that broke people, but the continuous humiliation and mental torture. =======One of my patients, who was subjected to such an interrogation, managed to remain silent.

He refused to answer a single question, and finally the Nazis dismissed him. But he never recovered from this terrifying experience. He hardly spoken even when he returned home. He simply sat bitter, full of indignation and in a few weeks he died. ========It was not his physical wounds that had killed him; it was the combination of fear and wounded pride.=======

_________Continuous humiliation – Mental torture – Fear -Wounded pride
There are fifteen thousand stories of wounded pride in the Fellowship of Friends. Of people who worked their ass off for years and were never, ever acknowledged until they forgot to acknowledge themselves. Fourteen thousand left but a thousand are still in. How did those that remained cope with the complete disregard but disregarding everybody else? The numbness with which Robert met them translated into the same numbness they applied to their own self and others. Since Robert’s behavior was the “enlightened behavior” they simply adopted it for themselves and everybody else. In every single event in the FOF, the humiliating conditions of the members are not recognized, they are deluded into thinking that they are being honored by the presence of a Divine being who will not listen to them, make them repeat endless quotes that he chose for them, make them pay ludicrous amounts of money to be there and stratify them in classes of those who can pay more and sit down or not enough and stand up and faint, sending out the message that if you don’t have enough money and faint, you are too weak anyway. If you do not recognize the humiliation in that what is humiliation for you? “Effort, more effort” “We are all beggars” “We are in this together” “We are luckier than life ________

We held many discussions about ways of strengthening our captured underground workers or preventing them from final self-betrayal. Should some of our people be given suicide capsules? That could only be a last resort.

_______Why do people in Cults tend to commit mass suicide? For them it is the statement of total surrender and sacrifice but in actual fact, it is the confirmation of self-betrayal and torment.
Surrender and sacrifice. These are key words. Children surrender to parents with love, students to teachers but adults who surrender to dictators and gurus in the hope of being acknowledged (being given being) are children who never grew up and end up making martyrs of themselves rather than transcending into another level through sacrifice.
We also tried systematic exercises in mental relaxation and auto-hypnosis (comparable with Yogi exercises) in order to make the body more insensitive to hunger and pain. If an individual’s attention is fixed on the development of conscious awareness of automatic body functions, such as breathing, the alert functioning of the brain cortex can be reduced, and awareness of pain will diminish. This state of pain insensitivity can sometimes be achieved through auto-hypnotic exercises. But very few of our people were able to bring themselves into such anesthesia.

________The sequence, which is no less than an intense mechanism of delusion, is given out with breathing exercises. Are they in any way meant to reduce the conflict between putting one’s mind under one’s will and placing it under the will of another? Or meant to accelerate that process by making it organic? The danger of the sequence is not nearly as much in the words that are mechanically uttered as in the willingness to submit one’s mind to the will of another, “all day”. Even member’s thoughts no longer belong to them and they are induced to guilt when they are not repeating the sequence. It is meant to be practiced ALL DAY. The idea that the “weaklings” unwilling to do it are the ones who left the Fellowship in the past two years boosts the false ego of those who remain into convincing themselves that they are more valuable than the rest, that they truly are the chosen ones.

Finally we evolved this simple psychological trick: when you can no longer outwit the enemy or resist talking, the best thing to do is to talk too much. This was the idea: keep yourself sullen and act the fool; play the coward and confess more than there is to confess. Later we were able to verify that this method was successful in several cases. Scatterbrained simpletons confused the enemy much more than silent heroes whose stamina was finally undermined in spite of everything.
Arriving at the London headquarters after an adventurous trip through France and Spain, I became Chief of the Psychological Department of the Netherlands Forces in England. In this official position I was able to gather data on what was happening to the millions of victims of Nazi terror and torture. Later on I questioned and treated several escapees from internment and concentration camps. These people had become real experts in suffering. ======The variety of human reactions under those infernal circumstances taught us an ugly truth: the spirit of most men can be broken; men can be reduced to the level of animal behavior. Both torturer and victim finally lose all human dignity.=======

______Dignity. In essence, dignity is natural to all men. It’s when they lose it that they no longer know who or what they are. In childhood, authoritarian parents who impose rather than compose, commonly lose dignity; in youths, it is lost to authoritarian educational institutions and its teachers or bosses as much as in the military and in adults it is quickly lost by their submission to its effects, reproducing the behavior they received without checking it. A mature adult is someone who acts from his/her own free will and not simply imitates and justifies his/her behavior by the behavior of others or the submission to an authority. The structure of Cults is based on the premise that the only one capable of developing the “ruling faculty” is the guru. They are totalitarian kinder-gardens for an already much humiliated population willing to torment itself in the hope that someone will recognize its spiritual worth. In a time of materialism in which human value is determined by the amount of money people make or have, it is not surprising that people are desperate to prove them selves in Cults but Cults simply enforce the status quo by the martyrdom of the individual before the guru-dictator. The massive suicide in cults is the confirmation of defeat of the human will. In cults, the human will succumbs to its circumstances.

“Kid Shelleen: great story about Robert Taylor, but do you really think that his proclamation that night misrepresented the Fourth Way? G. and O. were pretty cold fish as far as I can fathom, I can’t find anywhere they speak about happiness. Remember A.E. Waite’s condemnation of Ouspensky? That ‘love’ is nowhere in his system, and O. just tells Waite he’s a naïve fool to think that sleeping machines can love.”

Walter,

Actually, no, it is not my opinion that RT misrepresented standard 4th way doctrine with that statement. He pretty much nailed the Doom-und-Gloom state of man-as-machine right on the head. I was actually referring to Bob Burton when I was speaking of mis-representing 4th way concepts and principles. There are quite a few folks wandering around that feel anyone who spent time in the Fof really has no idea what the 4th way is about. That is probably true, to a certain extent, but since I now dismiss both the FoF and the 4th way, it only matters to me as a passing curiousity.

Also, I dig Gavin Bryars. Interesting composer and bassist. He wrote a great piece for bass and orchestra, “By The Vaar” for jazz bassist Charlie Haden. It’s an incredibly moving piece of music.

A recurring thread over the recent past has been the difficulties many endured in maintaining both family, children and partners, during their time in the fellowship. There was a strong tendency to see the maintenance of any kind of family situation as somehow contrary to the spirit of the the work and a rejection of your ‘higher possibilities’. I know this from my own experience, as I abandoned my daughter for three years when she was about ten years old in order to pursue what the fellowship had to offer. Fortunately, it turned out to be a temporary madness.

In fact, this is another divisive theory which has nothing in common with the work as taught by Gurdjieff. On numerous occasions in the transcripts of his meetings, he gives advice to students to pursue their marital and familial obligations in order to further their work! A couple of small examples:

1. “Well, if you have three children you should know that your life doesn’t exist any more for yourself, but for your children. Is it for your children that you do everything or for your own satisfaction? Ask yourself that. If you have asked yourself that, I can tell you that you have no remorse of conscience towards your children. That can serve you as a reminding factor to make you work in order to become a real man. You have no right to your satisfactions, that is finished. Everything is for your children – everything that you have for possibilities. It is an objective necessity. But you do not think of it, you continue to act the egoist. Have remorse of conscience for the future. Repair the past for the sake of the future. You are obliged to work for your children…”

2. “Children create for you special obligations. You should be obliged to sacrifice everything for your children in your ordinary life. At this time you and your wife ought to plan as an aim to live for your children, and this aim will give a contact for the work, because it is an objective aim and the work is also objective. Begin this. Discuss it with your wife. With her, plan as an aim to sacrifice everything for your children. Not for always, but for a special period of time.”

Gurdjieff also discussed relationships with parents in very similar terms. It is all a very far cry from the literal, and schizophrenic understandings of Robert Burton and his followers about the relation between the work and life.

Dragon. “I am quite sure Robert or his helpers are also “using” the magic thinking of the tarot.”

You’re right! The 22 cards of the major arcana are (or were) regularly used in meetings and at RB’s events, and treated with much the same attitude as the host of other quotations and sources. In other words, RB was the only one who had ‘magical’ access to their true inner meanings… So ‘The Hanged Man’ was interpreted as a man upside down in imagination, or ‘Death’ as the lower self in power, for example. In fact, anyone with knowledge of the cards will know that ‘Death’ is one of the best cards you can get in a reading, often representing the end of a stagnant situation and the beginning of a new possibility.

RT is an interesting character. A very good esoteric actor, but maybe not much more than that. After having been at a number of his meetings, he really began to repeat himself, so the act didn’t stay fresh for very long and lost its lustre. I think I only saw the man behind the mask once, at a quiet drink after watching a show in London. There were only two or three of us there, and it was the only time I saw him let his guard down and talk in quite a natural, down-to-earth and charming way… When he came to London at the time of discontent a couple of years ago, a couple of us put a lot of pressure on his ‘act’ with persistent questions, and he quickly became very shrill and quite fragile. He didn’t respond well to people questioning his authority.

I haven’t had time yet to read all of the above. But there are many enablers in the fof, RT being just one of them. The fof is a business. The goal is to lure customers. With customers, comes the money. For that, you need recruiters and advertising. You need to market your product. In the process, you don’t talk about the embarrassing stuff and you try to redirect people to other topics.

So, it’s the same as other companies, except for the tax-free status and the promise of salvation in exchange for sex, money, and/or numerous sacrifices. There’s also deception and secrecy, and the lack of transparency related to finances.

The above is a more accurate description of the Fellowship of Friends than “school.” — which understates it a bit.

Worth re-posting for an example of cult indoctrination. This is the fourth post of the blog, page 1…

Someone of over 30 years Says:
August 5, 2006 at 6:16 am

“I have been part of the fellowship for over 30 years, and have heard of many things that the “teacher” may have done.

I only know, that he promotes the pursuit of awakening for me. He has never approached me for anything claimed here. Have I heard of others that do get approached – yes. Is it rampant- no.

I read these comments, that question the idea that you cannot work alone – and recoil. To anyone who has seriously tried to awaken there has to be a recognition that by your self, you fall back to old patterns – to your old patterns of sleep. Does the Fellowship offer something that cannot be found on your own — yes! However, it is highly likely that it will take years to realize this. Awakening – in its real meaning – is something that you cannot put into words. Awakening is a state that is beyond words, your body, your idea of what your existance is. Once you begin to get a taste, a glimpse of its true and real meaning, then your life gets a focus that will never be turned back – unless your preference is to sleep.”

“Well,
I am a member of FOF for over 15 years, and my sincere advise to all seekers : RUN!!! Because if you join, you’ll subject yourself to the influence which will INEVITABLY twist your understanding and ability to think and make decisions, infuse you with fear of life outside the Fellowship, and develop protective mechanisms (or what we call buffers) to justify your new beliefs. Just like the member who posted above, you’ll learn about the lies, corruption and abuse, but you’ll prefer to “not notice”. Yes, that’s what happens. Because if you say something – you’re out!
Regardless if you were there for 30 years faithfully paying your 10% – you’ll get a boot, and no one will talk to you, all your “friends” wil turn away. Because they are told so, and they are afraid. Cold, cruel policy with no conscience or compassion. Well, I guess, slaves don’t get compassion – and members are slaves!
Essentially, the school is like a drug – a psycological one – you’ll get dependent and will not be able to quit. You’ll hallucinate too, and will see things twisted and colored the way your teacher wants them to be. Please trust me, I speak from personal (withdrawal) experience.
As for awakening, we are told in the school that it will take life-times, and endless efforts (read the member above) and as of today NOT A SINGLE PERSON in our school achieved awakening or even got close. Even all those 30-year members – none except for one devoted party-liner whom teacher announced as an enlightened being, I guess to make things look good for others.
Long-term memers become so affected by this “teaching” that they cannot adapt to regular life anymore. To many the teacher became a father figure. (Often a sex-father-figure).
By the way, it’s not 4th way school. It’s just on the cover. 4th way is long gone. It’s “Robert’s teaching”, and what it really means is total obedience, trained behaviour, manners and dress code, huge monthly payments, and crazy ideas. They are not even ideas, they are some codes and his “keys” to the Bible and ancient texts, short prayers and symbols – not rational, not meaningful, not even funny. No questions allowed, no verifications, no doubts. Very religious. Does it look like 4th way to you?
People in the group often act like police – watch, listen and then – report. It is so corrupted, there is so much money squeezed out of students – just to create a very, very high lifestyle for the Teacher. Oh, he is actually Beloved Teacher.
This School will not bring you to awakening. It will enslave you.
But to be fare – in first 2 -3 years you’ll get to know some very cool people, learn some basic Ouspensky terminology and will actually be able to observe more of yourself and others. You’ll even have some fun! Probably travel to different places and meet people from other countries. You’ll experience fine dining (very expensive though), high class events in rose gardens with fountains (again -it ain’t free), learn some manners and get some class. You’ll look good in toxedo! Women are not allowed to wear pants or jeans, so buy some nice dresses, ladies.

But fun will end, the longer you stay the deeper you sink. And just like the animal who was caged his whole life, you’ll lose sence of freedom and will start defending your cage.

Why i don’t list my name? For the fear of prosecution of course. Why I don’t leave the group? I think the time hasn’t come yet, and there are people in the group in need of support and help. I have dear friends who are stuck and I fell it’s my duty to try helping them. If I get kicked out they may not be able to communicate with me.
AGAIN, I BEG YOU – DO NOT JOIN THIS GROUP. DON’T. AND TELL OTHERS TOO.
If you really feel “spiritual” – check out some Advaita teachers, like Sailor Bob Adamson, Tony Parsons or Adyashanti – much cooler! Don’t pay Robert, he’s already making 5 mil a year from his students (not kidding).”

“Made in 1963 Lenica created a self-consciously Kafka-esque tale of a winged lonely man literally devoured by totalitarian rule. Along with Jiří Trnka’s Ruka (The Hand, 1965), Labirynt is considered to be one of the finest political animations ever made.”

Robert has asked that the following message be passed to all students. It is without precedent for the teacher to share his private life with us in this way. The timing of this message coincides with a period where many students are challenged by the new knowledge that influence C has released to the school. The developments described in this message are also the will of influence C and only the gods have decided the time and manner of this transition for the teacher. As some of you know, Robert shares sexual energy with his male friends in a consensual adult manner. The teacher wishes to clarify his position. One aspect of being centered in the nine of hearts and having a very demanding teaching schedule is that the teacher needs to harness the finer energy that otherwise goes to waste during sexual communion in order to support the great work of the gods.

Robert’s soul is female and the care of us and our noble school is Roberts work on earth. In order to better represent his soul, Robert will align his body to the female role by submitting to modern surgery. This procedure will involve extensive reconstruction with the finest specialists in the United States.

We are asked to contribute and your center directors will be collecting contributions in the next days as Robert wants to go ahead with this as funds are in place. We are being asked to give $64 for each year we have been in the school to symbolize the gift of the sequence. The teacher has expressed this as a task from influence C and this is not a voluntary donation. All contributors will receive one raffle ticket for every $64 given. The four names drawn will be those chosen by higher to be the first to dine with the teacher when she returns to Isis for Thanksgiving.

Additionally, Robert has asked that his students should write to him with suggestions for the name that he should take on his return. He asks that all cards should have a quote in which the name appears and a reference for the source where it is to be found. The student who suggests the new name adopted by our teacher will sit next to her at the meeting where her new name is announced.

Robert appreciates your loving support and wishes to have the following personal message relayed to all of you.

‘My Dears, the sacred nine of hearts needs a feminine vessel to transmit the holy sequence. Isis will rise again in the west. Thank you for your valuation and let us all thank influence C for the perfection of the play.’

(Stupid offensive sexist joke – do not read)
So Robert goes through with the operation and is discussing it with the “boys” over a few bottles of wine at the Galleria.
‘So Bobbie what was the worst part of the surgical procedure? Was it the breast implants?’
‘No Goodness, that part wasn’t so bad.’
‘Was it when they amputated your gentalia?’
‘No Dear, that didn’t hurt at all.’
‘Please just tell us: What was the worst part?’
‘It was when they stuck a tube up my nose and sucked out half my brains.’

“If the Fellowship of Friends were just a business, it wouldn’t harm so many people so deeply. Children, young people, adults and old people are not regular victims of regular businesses.”

Not “regular” businesses. That I would agree with. But children, young people, adults and old people are often the victims of businesses — e.g. the former Enron Corporation, and numerous others throughout history. That’s one reason we’ve had labor unions and lawyers fighting on the behalf of customers and employees who would otherwise fall victim to them.

The point in my previous post was that the fof is more of a business than it is a “school.” That’s part of the deception. Don’t let people think about all of the money “the school” is pulling in, and what the fof is doing with the money.

It’s hard for me to think about RT or anyone in the fof having “gravitas” or having any value whatsoever in “creating a higher state” when I realize he’s simply a recruiter, marketing exec, and public relations cheerleader. There have been many like him at numerous corrupt businesses throughout history, including Enron. There’s a reason that people are often described as “drinking the Kool Aid” at many corporations: There’s group think and deception in business, just as there was with the People’s Temple and Jim Jones, and just as there is with the Fellowship of Friends and Robert Burton.

Businesses, however, are — for the most part — not promising salvation and pretending they’re not businesses. So the level of deception in the Fellowship of Friends is a notch or two higher.

It’s been a lovely afternoon.
It’s about to rain.
The house is clean.
The dog is in.
There’s peace.

Where are you?
I miss your awful little posts
I hope you’re well, wherever you are!

It’s a strange thing how your lack of love leaves little to hold on to and yet behind that cold presentation one can still perceive the you down there. I can! Must have gotten used to loving that nothingness like those victims that keep asking for more!

It does not matter whether it was you or somebody else. It must be to some advantage to have serial husbands in case one wanted to replace a particular sequence! Unfortunately I’m still looking for the soul in yours. Even if it were for that new woman you’ve found for yourself, I’d be delighted to hear, she found a flowering soul!

Our lives are like trees that give fruit many years after they are planted. Nothing happens in vain. No matter how difficult a particular season, in the end, it’s the whole tree what counts.

I suppose your cynical little self will show up here shortly, equally cynical and disregarding in particular, anything I say. But at least I know now that you hear when it hurts enough. If one of you hears, maybe you could help the others de-crystallize.

It’s been less than two years; A lifetime! The longing for love dies slowly but it finally accomplishes itself and we are freed. I wonder why we are molded with such fire without anything to hold on to. Maybe it’s necessary to fly.

Does it surprise you that I’m no longer as tolerant with your doctrine? Maybe you thought that after all those years of training it would sink in more easily but I’ve become allergic. Like the asthma, it doesn’t let me breathe. Talking of which, I haven’t had any episodes for a long time. Nor do I throw up every time I go to a restaurant like I use to at Apollo D’Oro.

Art, what a great name! The only other Art I know is Garfunkel and love the music.

I suppose it’s obvious enough how much I hate them but unfortunately, after being married with Girard the real tragedy is that there’s nothing consciously evil about it, they are as victims as the rest of us. With that I don’t mean to protect them. They need to be stopped. But there’s a little boy or girl in each one of them that never grew up.

Wouldn’t it be a lot of fun if we could at least say that those MF got away with murder and actually enjoyed it? That they are alive! That they jumped into some other dimension and made light of everything they’d ripped off from the rest of us? But no, they are as sickly sincere as Daily Cardiac and equally boring.

I think it was the boredom what ended up killing me! You can see how boring I am myself from that angle, how I am still far from actually enjoying life but although I was already quite talented, four years of living with Daily Cardiac, (does it matter if it wasn’t him if they were the same?) gave me a master’s degree in the subject. I sound cynical but I mean it. These people are not having fun, they are suffering tremendously. We all do but in comparison, I now breathe a little happiness a few hours of the day especially knowing that there’s nothing that has to be done. No program. No event. No one to pay for and nothing that I have to become.

Of course, I agree with you: they made a business of awakening and left their lives behind. It’s a common mistake!

231. tatyana – January 14, 2009
RT was my first center director and a teacher. He was the reason I joined FOF. In Russia when one said ‘Robert’ and did not add ‘Burton’, it usually means ‘Taylor’. His unusual character in Russia reads as an occult and highly developed spiritual being. The way he treated humans in general including new students had such a scale that only leaves you suspecting that he is not human at all, because even though he is seeing all stupidity and triviality of human race he perhaps bored with it but not expecting or demanding anything, like a giant cat. Or rather Mephistopheles.

On the other hand, you better not believe me about it not being evil. It was evil enough. There is a coldness that you cannot overcome: That same thing that Daily Cardiac has that is unreachable. Normal enough people cannot conceive that there is nothing human in there. It is very difficult for me. I kept trying until I gave up. I believe that after a few years of treatment it could flourish but experts say a sociopath never changes. I never want to believe that.

“A man will often try to hold out beyond the limits of his endurance because he continues to believe that his tormentors have some basic morality, that they will finally realize the enormity of their crimes and will leave him alone. This is a delusion. The only way to strengthen one’s defenses against an organized attack on the mind and will is to understand better what the enemy is trying to do and to outwit him. Of course, one can vow to hold out until death, but even the relief of death is in the hands of the inquisitor. People can be brought to the threshold of death and then be stimulated into life again so that the torments can be renewed. Attempts at suicide are foreseen and can be forestalled.”

It’s so amazing because this is what they become experts at in Cults. Unlike prison camps where the tormentors supply the suffering, in Cults the mechanism reverses itself and it is the member him/her self who auto-flagellates him/her self and it’s the mastery of the guru who releases the pressure enough for the member to idolize him creating the dependency. The mechanism is perfect: The environment is so conditioned that the member is in a constant dissonance with it and him/herself eventually reaching out for help from the guru or an enabler who softens the dissonance appearing as “kind” as the “redeemer” and creating that tremendous dependency that finally culminates in blind idolatry.

Every event by Girard is about him playing the role of “mummy trying to soften out the dissonance that daddy Robert” and other aspects of the Fellowship create on the members all presented with the language that the member cannot find enough will to work on negative emotions, unnecessary suffering and keep his own presence. Girard rationalizes it all to ease the members pain temporarily but at the same time deepen the dependency on the cult with the conviction that he/she must continue to make effort.

Robert’s events are different. He has to maintain a huge distance because he is the “idealized divine figure” without which the whole game would crumble but he also pushes and pulls the members in a game of yo-yo with their emotions in such a way that he seems to be the one “forgiving them for their sins”, for their incapacity to remember themselves all the time, (which is the illusion that the dogma itself installs).

We must come back to this. This is worth deepening into. It’s late. Good-night…good morning!

A friend sent me this. I guess I must have been talking that spirichal shit again.

“This holding on to old paths in life holds you back. When you hang on, how far can you fly? Even when you hold on to a ribbon of nothing, you are still holding on. You have wound ribbon around your fingers, and you hold tight to the ribbon. You hold tight the way a baby’s hand holds on to whatever comes in its reach. You hold on to ideas. You hold on to the past. You hold on to ribbons of the past and flapping ribbons of the future, and you let this precise moment go, perhaps only to hold on to it later in retrospect. Let go to the winds that which belongs to the winds. Let the winds sweep your path clear. Let the branches fall. Let the winds of life prune your path so you can move forward. Let the winds blow away that which is not really here anyway and which yet holds you down.

It is as if you take a hammer and nails and batten down your life. You try to keep it safe, and safe to you may mean what has already been.

Beloveds, unfist all that which you hold on to. Unfist all you expect. Unfist all that you carry with you. Think of the baggage you carry with you and how long-standing it has been. How needless what you carry! You drag it along as if it served a worthy purpose. I tell you to let go, and still you hang on. You hold on, and you trip over all that you hold on to.

Someone make up a song of letting go, will you? There are songs of lost loves, and yet the lost loves are kept present, as if they, when all is said and done, amounted to more than your greatness anyway. All that remains are your thoughts, past thoughts about the past. Precious to you are your thoughts, yet you have read them over enough. It is time for you to write new thoughts. Clear space for new thoughts and new loves.

No more stuffing the past into drawers. Your mind is not meant to be an overstuffed file drawer. How much is enough, beloveds?

You shovel snow in the winter. Now shovel old thinking away. Let it melt in the sunshine of life. Let go, let go! Hurry it along. Hurry it gone. Trade in your old mind for new.

This clearing out is the fountain of youth so sought after. Unclog the mind. Let go of residue. Clean your windows. Unclutter your mind. Empty it so you can see. You want to see out and you want to see in.

Beloveds, you have your steps to evolution piled high. You can only trip over all this clutter on your stairs. Don’t go through it piece by piece. Just get a trash bag and toss it all in.

Tell Me, beloveds, what is there that you must really examine? What do you think would happen if you just tossed it out? What is your fear?

Pick up all the content on your golden stairs with your two hands and heave it.

Say, “So long, old thoughts! So long, all the shapes and sizes of you. So long, all of you that has been accumulating dust and making it difficult for me to climb. I have had enough of you. Honestly, I don’t know why I have kept all of you packed so tightly so long, as if, somehow, you strengthened the stairs of my life. Of course, you don’t. Of course, you never did. Of course, you hampered me. Of course, you got in my way. So long now, old thoughts so long held onto. So long.” ”
———————————————

Panorea, Jomo Piñata and others, in the book you’re reading Panorea or the many you seem to have read Jomo, have you ever encountered a similar understanding to this one? The little I’ve read from Lifton and others seems ever so accurate and yet I haven’t read about the suicide phenomenon or how the mechanisms reverse to those in totalitarian environments making the individual himself act against himself, placing the leader and enablers in a “redeemer” position rather than a “tormentor”.

The following is the repetition in case you jumped it. Thanks in advance for any feedback.

Text 4

“A man will often try to hold out beyond the limits of his endurance because he continues to believe that his tormentors have some basic morality, that they will finally realize the enormity of their crimes and will leave him alone. This is a delusion. The only way to strengthen one’s defenses against an organized attack on the mind and will is to understand better what the enemy is trying to do and to outwit him. Of course, one can vow to hold out until death, but even the relief of death is in the hands of the inquisitor. People can be brought to the threshold of death and then be stimulated into life again so that the torments can be renewed. Attempts at suicide are foreseen and can be forestalled.” from The Rape of The Mind by Joost A. M. Meerloo, M.D

It’s so amazing because this is what they become experts at in Cults. Unlike prison camps where the tormentors supply the suffering, in Cults the mechanism reverses itself and it is the member him/her self who auto-flagellates him/her self and it’s the mastery of the guru who releases the pressure enough for the member to idolize him creating the dependency. The mechanism is perfect: The environment is so conditioned that the member is in a constant dissonance with it and him/herself eventually reaching out for help from the guru or an enabler who softens the dissonance appearing as “kind” as the “redeemer” and creating that tremendous dependency that finally culminates in blind idolatry.

Every event by Girard is about him playing the role of “mummy trying to soften out the dissonance that daddy Robert” and other aspects of the Fellowship create on the members all presented with the language that the member cannot find enough will to work on negative emotions, unnecessary suffering and keep his own presence. Girard rationalizes it all to ease the members pain temporarily but at the same time deepen the dependency on the cult with the conviction that he/she must continue to make effort.

Robert’s events are different. He has to maintain a huge distance because he is the “idealized divine figure” without which the whole game would crumble but he also pushes and pulls the members in a game of yo-yo with their emotions in such a way that he seems to be the one “forgiving them for their sins”, for their incapacity to remember themselves all the time, (which is the illusion that the dogma itself installs).

I think the editors & staff of FOFion ought to investigate the rumor that Ranch/Renaissance/Apollo is going to be renamed:
“Real Cloud Cookie Land”
It’s a blatent attempt to recruit younger & more sophisticated followers.

Do these “public practices” from the past remain in the subconscious of present humanity and have they been perfected to the point that the masses ended up creating their own mechanisms for martyrdom in Cults, just like a man or woman who has been hurt as a child, repeats the same behavior that hurt her/him against others?

As long as we repeat the same processes we lived as children, is there no hope for progress? What is then required to overcome the childhood “programming”?

What is it exactly what gets to be repeated? Do the damages suffered by an individual as a child become perfected in his deployment of them towards others or do the harms and damages simply get repeated faithfully? In other words, does harm and evil perfection itself or does it simply repeat itself?
The question of “scapegoats” in Cults is paramount. It is my feeling that everyone but the enablers, and even they to the extent that they too can be ostracized no matter how many years they’ve paid their dues to the cult, adopts the psychology of “scapegoat”

How have human beings moved from torturing each other in prison camps to the refined self torture in Cults that tends to lead to mass suicide?

****************

My government gave me the power to investigate a group of traitors and I also interrogated imprisoned Nazis. When I review all these wartime experiences, all the confusion about courage and cowardice, treason, morale, and mental fortitude, I must confess that my eyes were only really opened after a study of the Nuremberg trials of the Nazi leaders. These trials gave us the real story of the systematic coercive methods used by the Nazis. At about the same time we began to learn more about the perverted psychological strategy Russia and her satellites were using.

Witchcraft and Torture

The specific techniques used in the modern world to break man’s mind and will to extort confessions for political propaganda purposes are relatively new [in 1956] and highly refined. Yet enforced confession itself is nothing new. From time immemorial tyrants and dictators have needed these “voluntary” confessions to justify their own evil deeds. The knowledge that the human mind can be influenced, tamed, and broken down into servility is far older than the modern dictatorial concept of enforced indoctrination. The primitive shaman used awe inspiring ritual to bring his victim into such a state of fright hypnosis that he yielded to all suggestions. The native on whom a spell of doom has been cast by the medicine man may become so hypnotized by his own fear that he simply sits down, accepts his fate, and dies (Malinowski).

Throughout history men have had an intuitive understanding that the mind can be manipulated. Elaborate strategies have been worked out to achieve this end. Ecstasy rituals, frightening masks, loud noises, eerie chants all have been used to compel the crowd to accept the beliefs of their leaders. Even if an ordinary man at first resists a cruel shaman or medicine man, the hypnotizing ritual gradually breaks his will.

More painful methods are not new either. When we study the old reports of the Inquisition, or of the many witch trials, both in Europe and America, we learn a great deal about these methods. The floating test is one example. Those accused of witchcraft were thrown into the river, their feet and hands tied together. If the body did not sink, the victim was immediately pulled out of the water and burned at the stake. The fact that he did not sink was proof positive of his guilt. If, on the other hand, the accused obeyed the law of gravity and sank to the bottom of the river, the drowned body was ceremoniously removed from the river and proclaimed innocent. Not much choice was left to the victim!
Man has been tremendously inventive in developing means for inflicting suffering on his fellow man. With refined passion he has devised techniques which provoke the most exquisite pain in the most vulnerable parts of the human body. The rack and the thumbscrew are age old instruments and have been used not only by primitive judges but also by so called civilized dictators and tyrants.

In order better to understand modern mental torture, we must constantly keep in mind the fact that from the earliest days bodily anguish and the rack were never meant merely to inflict pain on the victim. They may not have expressed their understanding in sophisticated terms, but the medieval judge and hangman were nevertheless aware that there is a peculiar spiritual relationship and mental interplay between the victim and the rest of the community. Much painful torture and hanging had to be done as public demonstrations. After suffering the most intense pain, the witch would not only confess to shocking sexual debaucheries with the devil, but would herself gradually come to believe the stories she had invented and would die convinced of her guilt. The whole ritual of interrogation and torture finally compelled her to yield to the fantasies of her judges and accusers. In the end she even yearned for death. She wanted to be burned at the stake in order to exorcise the devil and expiate her sins.
These same judges and hangman realized, too, that their witch trials were intended not only to torture the witches, but even more to torture the bystanders, who, albeit unconsciously, identified themselves with the victims. This is, of course, one of the reasons burnings and hangings were held in public and became the occasion for great pageants. Terror thus became widespread, and many judges spoke euphemistically of the preventive action of such torture. Psychologically, we can see this entire device as a blackmailing of human sympathy and the general tendency to identify with others.

As far back as 1563 the courageous Dutch physician Johannes Wier published his masterwork, _De_Praestigiis_Daemonum_ — (_On_the_Delusions_About_Demons_) in which he states that ========the collective and voluntary self acusation of older women through which they exposed themselves to torture and death by their inquisitors was in itself an act inspired by the devil, a trick of demons, whose aim it was to doom not only the innocent women but also their reckless judges.========== Wier was the first medical man to introduce what became the psychiatric concept of DELUSION and mental blindness. Wherever his book had influence, the persecution of witches ceased, in some countries more than one hundred and fifty years before it was finally brought to an end throughout the civilized world. His work and his insights became one of the main instruments for fighting the witch delusion and physical torture (Baschwitz). ========Wier realized even then that witches were scapegoats for the inner confusion and desperation of their judges and of the “Zeitgeist” in general.========

What is it exactly what gets to be repeated? Do the damages suffered by an individual as a child become perfected in his deployment of them towards others or do the harms and damages simply get repeated faithfully? In other words, does harm and evil progress and perfects itself or does it simply repeat itself?

I would like to pick up this question now because in the process of observing the gradual destruction of the “established personality” in myself and others in Cults what I watched was that the enablers who had managed to replace their old personality for the cult personality with considerable success, recover an act of apparent “harmony” while those of us who do not accept the process easily manifest rather “awkwardly” socially and suffer deep depression and inner dissonance. In the latter the suffering is prolonged with sporadic outbursts of joy characteristic of the manic depressive while in the former it assumes explosive outbreaks of rage that are then quickly changed into the conditioned behavior needed to represent the Cult role. This cannot be generalized unless we hear from other people’s experiences. Here I’m talking only about the patterns in Girard Haven and myself.

Even in the successful enablers, the apparent harmony is projected out only in public events like a show they learnt to play, deepening the division into the two personalities that gets expressed even in the ritual of “dressing up” for the event. They gradually change from one to the other like any show man. Question: Is not the whole gold alchemy attire of the Fellowship a necessary part for Robert and the rest to help them believe in what they are doing? Is it not just an aspect of the “elaborate fiction”? Are not the “hardships” of making up this elaborate fiction (servants, constructors, flower arrangements, dress code, etc) meant to induce the member into believing that what is going on is absolutely real? And after replacing the reality of life in which common sense is necessary for the Cult reality in which common sense is extirpated, is the member not molded into an artificial, unnecessary way of life in which he is reduced to the modeled participation of the cult stereotype without self expression?
Doesn’t the dissonance between the organized, meticulously planned cult environment in public and the disorganized personal life in private in which the outbursts of anger and negativity are common, deepen the separation of the personalities?

” Let go to the winds that which belongs to the winds. Let the winds sweep your path clear. Let the branches fall. Let the winds of life prune your path so you can move forward.”
**

Woke up feeling a bit scattered and your post is the first thing I read this morning. Thank you.

The outer forms surrounding my life right now are imploding, exploding, and in general falling apart. Almost no clue as to what will happen next. I suspect I am within a few weeks of setting out on the road with all my belongings packed into an old beat-up car with problems of its own, with almost no money, huge credit card debt, and a mind that is quite literally spinning. I was thinking I am getting way too fucking old for this, but I read those lines this morning, and I coud begin to feel the excitement that only the unknown seems to produce.
I will take those lines out on the road with me when I go. Thank you Yesri Baba.

ps – Now, if I could only learn to get to the place where it does not take outside conditions to push me into that ‘moving forward’.

ANCHORAGE, Alaska (ARK) — A growing number of climatologists have become concerned about the effects of FOF Corporation on global warming.

According to a recent report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, FOF is releasing several billion pounds of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere every second.

Scientists say the huge carbon footprint is caused by the daily release of mind-numbing dogma into the atmosphere, as well as dysfunctional group dynamics, and a lack of open discussion.

“It’s no wonder this guy is predicting the end of civilization,” one scientist said of FOF CEO Robert Burton. “He’s one of the main causes of it.”

FOF stocks nosedived Friday after the news. Meanwhile, many investors are looking for newer companies specializing in alternative energy systems. Two such companies, Free and Open Discussion, Inc., and Critical Thinking, Inc., have gained market share in recent weeks.

James:
My heart goes out to you. Thanks for being real. I hope you’ll take some quiet meditative time for yourself in the next few days to let the creative side of you come forward, helping you gain insight into the direction of your next move. That’s the difference between being reactive to outside conditions and proactive from within.

BTW, was some of this credit card debt you incurred a result of making so-called voluntary “donations” to the Fellowship of Friends AKA Pathway to Presence?

‘Let go to the winds that which belongs to the winds. Let the winds sweep your path clear. Let the branches fall. Let the winds of life prune your path so you can move forward. Let the winds blow away that which is not really here anyway and which yet holds you down.’

You don’t need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows.
Bob Dylan (Another old, but not dead, guy.)

I’m sorry to hear you’re in that situation. I don’t think there’s much I can do to help but if you wish to write to me at ludotekaatsucceeddotnet and let me know what you do, what you can work in and check out if there’s anything here for you, I’d be happy to try. Maybe english lessons in a School?

Scientology can be a ghastly and humiliating experience for anyone with an IQ over 75 or an annual income of under $500,000. If you are stupid and rich, however, then sign on the dotted line. You’ll be made to feel very welcome.

Easy to dismiss as merely potty, Scientology’s medical and psycho-therapeutic malpractice has resulted in numerous suicides and deaths. In his new book The Complex, former Scientologist John Duignan writes of twenty people he knew personally who became insane or committed suicide.

Here are a few questions to consider.

What kind of friend would leave you because someone else told them they had to?

Why is there not an early-detection system for Suppressive Persons? Why does it take ten or twenty years sometimes to discover them?

Are your statistics more important than you? When you’re upset, who is there for you, free of charge? When you succeed at something you really wanted to do yourself, who cares?

When watching a Scientology event video alone or in a small group, do you give a standing ovation? Do you clap? What about when watching the same video in a large group?

What are the local or international 1-, 5-, 10-, 20-year statistics for training and auditing completions? Do you care? Are you curious? Where can you find out? Is it ok to ask?

Who are the top executives? What do they do? Have you ever met with them in person? Have you met their families? Do they have individual hopes and dreams? Hobbies? Problems? Are they happy or frustrated? Where are they now? Who were the top executives the past 40 years? Is it ok to ask? Who records our Church history?

If all you cared about was doing the right thing, you didn’t care who was looking, what would you be doing? How much of what you are doing is based on following orders or going with the flow, and how much is based on what you truly believe to be right? Why do you need so many orders?

How many bulk mail items do you receive? How many phone calls? How many e-mails? Do you want them?

How many HCOBs do you know of that you seriously doubt that LRH wrote? Did you verify he did? How did you verify it?

What are your crimes? Hmmmm? Think about it. What are your crimes, really? OK, scratch that. Answer this. How do your crimes stack up against your contributions?

Suppose David Miscavige showed up at the New Years Event in a grey shirt. And what if his first words were, “I’m sorry, I’m so sorry. I’ve been lying to you all, to you who’ve trusted me utterly. I truly thought I was doing the right thing, at first. …”, and he proceeded to tell the whole story? What would be your reaction? He’s a person too, you know.

I am not attempting to harm Scientologists, the Sea Organization, or any Church official or staff. They are good people who sincerely wish to help, and do so regularly. I am formally stating my beliefs. I am criticizing and rejecting various practices: pompous haranguing, bulk mail blizzards, limited time special offers, micro-management, ignorance/hiding/non-confront of bad news within the Church, ignorance/hiding/non-confront of possibly good new ideas elsewhere, needless secrecy, out-of-proportion justice actions, interference in others’ communications, etc. I consider these to be anti-Scientology. I am asking the obvious questions, obvious to anyone who dares to look. And I’m not buying any more nonsense.

Do you scorn me? Are you thinking I am a treasonous 1.1 goody-goody, now turning on my group? Then, realize what this means to me. I’ve been a Scientologist practically all my life. I’ve spent hundreds of thousands of dollars of my own hard-earned money on Scientology. I’ve spent years studying Scientology courses. I’m risking losing many friends. I’m risking the Church ordering my own mother to never speak to me. Speaking out as I am is not a choice I made without much painful consideration. I’m putting my ass on the line, looking like a traitor to Scientologists and looking like a brainwashed fool to everyone else. So, don’t lay the blame on me. I tried in earnest to get it right. I tried to help. I ain’t the problem here. You’ll know that when, after you’ve written me off, all the problems I mention will still be with you.

Suppressing one’s own communication is often wrong, but is a personal choice. Suppressing others’ communication is, for lack of a better word, suppressive.

What is Scientology?

I thought the top triangle of the Scientology symbol represented Affinity, Reality, and Communication. Affinity — I like you. I don’t like your money, your position, your impressive achievements, your statistics or certificates. I don’t care about your public speech, your clever jokes. I might or might not like your intelligence, your ability, your body, or your beliefs. It’s not your culture or your country. I like the person inside, the real you. I like being with you, no matter what anyone else thinks. Reality — We agree on something. We’re not just trying to impress someone. We don’t reluctantly agree. We’re not voting for the same lesser-of-two-evils. It’s not a forced compromise. It’s not a legal contract. We just happen to agree. And it’s great to know someone that thinks like I do — what a team! Communication — I’m talking to you. I want you to know what I’m thinking. I’m the guy sending the message. It’s coming from me. It’s not coming through me. It’s not paid for. It’s not approved. And I’m sending the message to you. Though the whole room can hear me, it’s for you. I want you to get it. You. Not him. Not her. You. Me to you. And if you want to reply, all the better.

I thought the lower triangle represented Knowledge, Responsibility, and Control. Knowledge — You know something. You’re not afraid of being proven wrong. You welcome criticism. You didn’t just repeat “4×6=24” a hundred times. You made a rectangle out of 24 marbles. Your certainty does not decrease by hearing more opinions, because you can differentiate between your own observation and what someone tells you. You looked, you struggled through the confusion, you found out. You know. Responsibility — You own something. It’s your job, your area, your operation. You know what’s yours and what’s not yours and what you share with others. No one forced you into it. No one dumped it on you. You decided to put it on yourself to make it happen. You’ll gladly take the credit for success, or suffer the consequences of failure. You don’t let the ignorant make the rules. You care about the outcome. You care about the people. Control — You control something. You’re not on a power trip, impressed with your own status. You’re not issuing impossible orders in a commanding voice. You’re not freaking out, overworked, overwhelmed. Your credit is not maxed-out to the insane edge. You’re not sloppy and lazy. You set the example. You lead from the front. You make steady, skilled motions. You’re competent. You’re in control.

I thought Scientology was for improving the ability and courage of the individual. I thought the idea was to increase survival and knowledge of self, family, groups, mankind, plants and animals, the physical universe, life, and God. A world where the able can prosper and where honest beings have rights. Freedom. That is the Scientology I was taught. That’s what I thought it was all about. That’s the Scientology we were promised. Remember?

laura,
re: the thread on creativity… “given enough good food, art is a more deeply and comprehensively satisfying activity than eating….”

olaf stapeldon

he is one of my favorite authors… if you ‘have time,’
STARMAKER is amazing….

“WHAT ARE THESE SPIRITUAL VALUES THAT WE ARE ASKED TO CONSIDER IN relation to economic values and the future of man? It seems important to form a clear idea of them at the outset of this conference, lest we should be talking at cross purposes.

Let me begin by describing a little experience of my own, and asking whether in its humble degree it deserves to be called a “spiritual” experience, concerned with “spiritual values.”

In the field next my house there are two colts, inseparable companions. They like standing head to tail, so that each one’s face may have the benefit of the other’s fly-whisk. One of them is a bit queer. He has a Roman nose, a serpent’s eye, a mop of a mane that would seem more appropriate on a toy horse, and legs that are almost too sturdy for his still rather slim adolescent body. He often stands quite still for a long time with his head held fantastically high, like a cavalry charger standing at attention. The other day I saw him eating my young and struggling hedge; not for the first time. I rushed at him with fierce noises. He moved a yard or two away, and regarded me with cold resentment, sidelong, out of his serpent eye. I stood watching him watching me. Presently, whether because of his Roman nose (reminiscent of I know not what prehistoric beast) or because of my own prehistoric hullaballoo, the past seemed to flood upon me. I saw the two of us as brothers in evolution. Behind us trailed our ancestries, our long separate ancestries and our longer common ancestry. Primitive mammals, reptiles, fishes, worms, the warm primeval ocean, the fluid jet which was to become the planets, but had first to be plucked from the fiery flesh of the sun—all this, and more, crowded upon my imagination. The experience moved me deeply, not violently, but deeply; with a sense first of the reality of that colt as a conscious though alien being. Like Martin Buber, I inwardly said to him, “Thou !” And compassion seized me, for him and for the two of us, as products of mighty forces and the sport of obscure powers, which neither of us, not even my humanly superior self, could understand or control. But laughter also moved me, laughter at the two of us, each so annoyed at the other over that hedge. And though, of course, I did not forget that my equine brother was in many ways quite a bit more stupid than myself (which is saying a lot, if I am to accept the verdict of some reviewers), yet I was stirred with a strange sense of our kinship, each with the other, but also with the flies that were teasing both of us, and with the unfortunate hedge, and the wind, and the sun himself, and the unseen stars and galaxies. And over and above this sense of the kinship of what theists would call all “creatures,” all “created things,” I was struck mentally dumb for a moment with a feeling of something else, something alien to all creatures. Something dark-bright, terrible and beautiful. Something “other.” For all I know, that something was just the prodigious bulk and power of the universe itself, confronting one of its tiny members through the medium of his imagination. Anyhow, the upshot for me was that something seemed to have “come at me” through the appearance of that colt, something to which I had to respond with greeting, but also with obeisance.

Of course there was nothing specially mysterious or mystical or in any way inexplicable in this odd little experience. Modem psychology could give a very reasonable account of it; up to a point at any rate. But I am inclined to say that it was a “spiritual” experience and concerned with “spiritual values.” It was “spiritual,” I should say, because it was a case of behaviour on a relatively high level of psychological development; high for me, anyway. It involved a kind of apprehension or sensitivity which discovers values not revealed on lower planes of development, values connected with self-awareness and awareness of other selves. In another sense also, I should say, it was spiritual. It was a reaction of this most developed and awake level of my personality to the universe as a whole, or rather to my experienced universe as a whole. I am suggesting that the word “spiritual” should be reserved for experience on the distinctively human level of development. Such experience discovers values that cannot be fully described in terms of lower levels. It issues in action (“spiritual” action) which is a response of the awakened personality as a whole to its world as a whole. If it does not thus issue in action, its frustration inevitably causes some degree of spiritual ill-health. The action, however, may be no single act but rather, as in my experience with the colt, a general fortifying for future action.

Of course, the word “spiritual” may be used simply in contrast with “material”; but I cannot believe that this is the significant use of it to-day. That the universe is made up of two distinct stuffs or substances, matter and spirit, is at any rate very debatable. On the other hand, the distinction between “economic values” and “spiritual values” is in the last resort equivalent to the distinction between the lower-level and the higher-level needs of men, and is significant. Of course, the two kinds of values are often inextricably tied up together, and both are necessary to fullness of life. For instance, no really satisfactory human living is possible without both good food and art. In certain circumstances each of these may be rightly pursued simply for its own sake. But, given enough good food, art is a more deeply and comprehensively satisfying activity than eating. In the last analysis it is more true to say that the spiritual activities are the “right” goal of living than that the economic activities are so. On the other hand, there are many occasions when the truly spiritual act is to sacrifice some obvious spiritual value for the sake of some economic value without which the spirit cannot flourish. There may well be moments in world-history when it is more truly spiritual to strive for an economic revolution than to enjoy art for its own sake.

But why, it may be objected, call these upper-level activities “spiritual”? “Spirit” and “spiritual” are very ambiguous and emotive words. Some sticklers for clear thinking urge us to abandon them altogether. Yet it is difficult to do so. Often when talking to materialists I feel bound to use them, not merely to shock but to emphasize that the spiritual values are not reducible to primitive values. Yet, frankly, when theists and other spiritists use these words, I myself am often shocked.

To-day it is peculiarly important that we should find a clear meaning for “spirit” and “spiritual values.” Recently it was fashionable, and in some quarters it is still fashionable, to say that, after all, the so-called “spiritual values” were only sophisticated forms of primitive values, or that spiritual motives were only disguised expressions of primitive instinctive motives, such as self-regard, sex and gregariousness. There is to-day a widespread emotional revulsion against this view, which is beginning to seem too clever by half. In blood and tears we are learning that there really are some values which are in some important sense sacred, some ways of experiencing and behaving which are better than others in some fundamental manner, and other ways of behaving which are utterly wrong.

This painful rediscovery and restatement of “spiritual values” I believe to be the most important feature of our time. But it brings with it a great danger. Many who have found that, after all, pure materialism is not enough are tempted simply to accept uncritically the teaching of some religion, generally the Christian religion, or at any rate, some kind .of theism. But the spiritual problem of our day is not to be solved as easily as that. While we have indeed to outgrow simple materialism and ethical nihilism, we must not forget all that we have learnt from the great movement of scepticism. And while we have, I believe, to re-learn a great deal from Christianity, we must continue to regard all its doctrines about the nature of the universe and the destiny of human individuals with profound scepticism. What we have to re-learn from Christianity is not metaphysical doctrines but an emotional attitude; namely the longing to dedicate oneself wholeheartedly to the spiritual values. Indeed I will dare even to go so far as to say to dedicate oneself to “the spirit.” But in saying this I must guard myself by emphasizing that by “the spirit” I do not mean a deity, personal or “super-personal” (whatever that is); I mean a way of life and an attitude of mind. I mean the most integrated and conscious sort of human behaviour. Sometimes I mean “that in us” which behaves in this way, without specifying whether “that in us” is simply the individual personality in its most fully developed form or something which extends far beyond the individual personality. We have no assurance whatever about the status of “the spirit” in the universe. We know “the spirit” only in ourselves and in our relations with one another. It may be also a mighty power in the universe at large; it may be in some obscure sense a personal or super-personal God. But we cannot know this—not yet, at any rate. Human intellect is not yet sufficiently developed to form trustworthy concepts in such high spheres. The chances are thousands to one that all our most carefully conceived ideas on these subjects are more false than true. To say that there is a personal God, or that there is not, to say that human individuals have eternal life, or that they have not, are probably almost as naïve statements as to say that the earth is carried on the back of an elephant which stands on a tortoise. If our spiritual values need the support of such beliefs, or indeed of any beliefs, their position is indeed precarious. But they don’t; any more than the earth needs the support of the elephant and the tortoise, The earth does not even “stand on its own feet.” It needs no feet, and no standing. It is itself the ground of all our standing. Similarly with “spiritual values.” The Churches thought it was necessary to support them with doctrines about God and immortality. When the support began to seem very insecure, many good people supposed that the spiritual values must crash, that they had crashed, that they were illusory. But to-day, just because spiritual values have been so violently discarded, and we have been flung into hell on earth, we begin to realise their authority far better than we did in the time of our comfortable beliefs.

At this point someone may protest that, even if it is excusable to use the phrase ‘spiritual values,” it is misleading to speak about “the spirit,” unless one means by the word a substance, contrasted with “matter.” I sympathize with this contention; but, after all, we speak of “the spirit of the meeting” and “the spirit of the game” without implying that the meeting or the game are infused or possessed by a spirit-substance. And further, even though it is impossible to give any clear intellectual content to “the spirit,” it seems important to retain the word so as to emphasize that we feel emotionally bound in loyalty to “something” in ourselves yet more than ourselves, and indeed more than mankind; “more,” at least in the sense in which an ideal is more than any particular approximation to it.

It may be said that to take a position between the materialists, who recognize no spiritual values, and the theists, who ground the spiritual values in their belief in God, is to go between the devil and the deep sea. And so perhaps it is. But there is a strait and narrow way between the devil and the deep sea, and it is the only way of life in our day.

Traditionally, the spiritual values, I suppose, are goodness, truth and beauty. Traditionally, spiritual experience and action are the experience and action distinctive of “spirits.” Traditionally, human individuals are “spirits” capable of spiritual and of unspiritual or positively wicked behaviour; and their salvation lies in behaving in a manner true to their essential nature as spirits.

Even if we are sceptical about the idea that we are “spirits,” metaphysical substances having eternal life, we can significantly make use of the old terminology, since we do distinguish between the upper and lower levels of our nature. There is a very real difference between them, both biologically and psychologically. Julian Huxley has recently made a strong plea for the objectivity of the concept of development. Human experience and behaviour are objectively more developed than an ape’s. Some kinds of human experience and behaviour are more developed than other kinds; though within the human sphere it is often immensely difficult to judge between different kinds of behaviour in respect of development. Who shall judge whether Shakespeare or Plato was, on the whole, the more developed human being? Nevertheless we cannot but try to apply this standard in judging one another and ourselves.

By saying that some human behaviour is more developed than others the biologist and the psychologist mean simply that it is more sensitive, more comprehensively and more finely graded in relation to the environment, more integrated, more accurately related to the environment as a whole.

But what has this to do with spiritual values? Is developed behaviour ethically better than less developed behaviour? It is. But ethical judgments can be made only at a relatively high level of development, and about behaviour on relatively high levels. Even so, ethical judgments arc apt to be confused by incursions from lower levels. At a certain level of development new kinds of experience become possible; new values, values of a new order come into view, and in relation to them, new kinds of behaviour are demanded.

Roughly we may say that the spiritual experiences and values and behaviour are those which are distinctive of a certain high degree of self- awareness and other-awareness, and intellectual abstraction, and aesthetic sensibility. They are concerned with personality, community, intellectual integrity, the aesthetic aspect of all experience, and (so to say) the need to establish some sort of adjustment to, or accord with, the whole of one’s experienced universe. The spiritual attitude includes a tendency to regard particular events as in one way or another symbols with very far-reaching significance. My incident with the colt became a symbol of the whole drama of life in this universe.

In this last connection consider the difference between the spiritual attitude to existence and the unspiritual. The unspiritual is said to be “addicted” to lower-level ends, such as self-interest; sex, the group. The fully spiritual attitude, though it does not necessarily reject these ends, pursues them with detachment because, it is addicted wholly to the spiritual end, which is the fulfilling of the spiritual capacities of selves (whether of myself or other selves is in the last resort irrelevant), and of the human race as a whole, and equally of any other potentially spiritual beings, if there are any, anywhere in the universe.

The goal or rather direction of spiritual development, so far as I can see, is very roughly this: precise and comprehensive awareness of the world, including oneself and other selves; precise feeling about all this; and coherent and creative action to open up ever new possibilities of the life of the spirit. This goal is essentially a communal, not an individualistic or private, goal. The self-centred individual can never even begin to seek It. It is the way of life for individuals, but only for those who feel themselves to be “members one of another.”

Both strict humanists and theists might, I think, be persuaded to agree on some such terms. What they would certainly disagree about is the status of spiritual values. Humanists might indeed quite well call the values of the developed consciousness “spiritual,” and might even speak of “the spirit of man” or the “human spirit”; but without implying that a metaphysical substance of spiritual nature resided in or possessed all human individuals. The human spirit, they might say, is simply the form of behaviour or way of life which is distinctive of the human species, even though no human beings succeed in living permanently on that high level. The spiritual values are the values recognized by man on that highest plane of his development.

True! But I think strict humanists do not always realize the full implications of this kind of statement. They fall to realize that to say this is to accept a standard other than sheer humanity.

Theists and other religious believers protest, rightly, I think, that to make man the criterion of the “spiritual” is to deprive the word of its most significant meaning. Spiritual values, they say, are spiritual not merely because they are human; they are spiritual in their own right, so to speak. And for man the way of life is to approximate to them. Man’s true nature is indeed spiritual; but there is also much in him which is not I spiritual. He can fulfil his spiritual nature only in so far as he allows I himself to be possessed by “the spirit,” which they regard as superhuman and universal.

I shall not enter into this controversy. Probably as with so many hoary controversies, the issue is wrongly posed, like the time-honoured question as to whether the hen came first or the egg. Tentatively I suggest some such compromise as the following. The humanists are right in saying that we know nothing of the spirit save in ourselves and our relations with one another; but the religious people are right in insisting that the spirit confronts us as something more than our ordinary selves, something claiming, and rightly claiming, absolute authority over our ordinary selves, something to which our ordinary selves, when they are sufficiently; awake and not perverted by irrelevant cravings of lower order, cannot but will absolute loyalty.

It comes to this. In this great problem the heart, sufficiently purged and fortified, is a more trustworthy guide than the intellect in its present fledgling state. And the heart feels with profound conviction, especially in these days of blood and hate and folly and barbarian values, that human individuals and the race as a whole must be judged according to a criterion independent of the actual extant nature of man. The fundamental spiritual values are, after all authoritative, even though our intellects cannot yet satisfactorily explain their authority. Whatever the truth about God and immortality and the nature of the universe, we know in our hearts absolutely that we ought to regard ourselves as instruments though imperfect instruments of the spirit. Even on the plane of pure intellect, it is more true to affirm this than to deny it. If we have not this conviction, there is no health in us. We are damned. We are non-interventionists, Munichites. We make intellectual scepticism and detachment an excuse for moral detachment.

But though loyalty to spiritual values should, I feel, lead us to go thus far with the theists, farther we must not go. For intellectual integrity also is a spiritual duty. We must not persuade ourselves into belief in doctrines which go beyond the proper range of extant human intellect. The only;: piety that we can permit ourselves is an agnostic piety.

So much for the status of “the spirit” and of “spiritual values.” Let us now consider some of the kinds of experience and action which may reasonably be said to be concerned with spiritual values. I shall dwell mainly on the kind which I believe to be most significant for us to-day, neglecting others equally important in the long run, such as the intellectual and aesthetic values. Of these I would merely insist that they really are spiritual values. But I would add that the spiritual attitude to them involves a realization of their limitations. Though within its proper sphere intellect is paramount, there are regions of human experience where, for the present, at any rate, it cannot go far; and, when it falsely claims to have gone far, it becomes dangerously misleading. The chief of these regions is, of course, the whole vast sphere of the status of the spirit and of spiritual values. Similarly with art. Within its proper sphere aesthetic sensibility is paramount; but to care only for the aesthetic aspect of life is co betray, not serve, the spirit.

In order to complete the picture one point should be briefly added in its more awakened mood the mind may find a spiritual value even in the simplest and most commonplace experiences. Sense-perceptions and simple muscular activities, and indeed all kinds of events, may seem to yield up their inner nature, may become arresting simply through their vividness and precision of form, so that we feel ourselves confronted with the features of a living reality other than ourselves. Or they may come to us rich in symbolization. We drink cold water on a hot day. How many millions of beings, human and sub-human, have delighted in that penetrating coldness! Thus the sensations become at once an exquisite confrontation with reality and a ritual act of worship, an act done “for the glory of God.” Even if one is no theist, one may recognize the emotional truth of the phrase.

The spiritual values which I want to discuss in more detail, are those connected with personality and community. Let us begin with com- passion. Many people would say that compassion has always a spiritual aspect. But surely we must distinguish between two kinds of compassion, one spiritual, the other not. The unspiritual, or only rudimentarily spiritual, kind of compassion is that which is common to men and beasts. The other is distinctively personal, and may be called “compassion with insight.” The bitch is compassionate towards her pups, in that she is distressed by their distress, and so on; but she lacks insight into them as conscious beings. Jealous possessiveness may actually drive her to eat them. Even human mothers may fail through insufficient imaginative insight into their children’s peculiar needs and capacities. In truly personal compassion on the other hand, there is a much higher degree of insight into ,the other’s actual nature as a conscious being other than oneself. And this insight may lead to a different kind of behaviour, in fact to behaviour in accord with a true personal relationship. Such compassion and such behaviour are spiritual in that they are concerned with a spiritual value, namely, personality. They are also sometimes spiritual in another sense. In compassion with insight and in every truly personal relationship there is often a sense of universal significance, of insight through the particular symbol Into the universal plight of personalities in this formidable universe.

Compassion with insight is something different in kind from sheer anima affection, and not reducible to it; though of course, it includes it. Compassion with insight is an activity distinctive of the self-conscious and other-conscious level of development; and therefore “spiritual.”

As with compassion, so with all fellow-feeling. Animal gregariousness is fellow-feeling without insight, or with a minimum of it. The sick sheep may be persecuted by the flock. The eccentric human being may be persecuted by the mob. On the other hand, human comradeship, love, and all the kinds of true community are fellowship with insight into the other, or others, as conscious beings with peculiar character, needs, powers. The values which this relationship generates are spiritual values.

Take the case of sex-relationship. In the most developed form of it other-consciousness dominates the whole relationship. There is a passionate coming together of two diverse personalities through the exquisite physical medium. Because of the diversity there is inevitably conflict, overt or suppressed; but if there is sufficient self-awareness and other-awareness, and sufficient mutual valuing, the very conflict may become a source of enlargement to both parties. The essence of personal love is delighted awareness of the other as different, though of course fundamentally akin. There is mutual acceptance, mutual responsibility and cherishing, with consequent self-discipline for the other’s sake, and emergence into a richer self, which is felt to be organic to the precious community of the two lovers.

Genuine personal love of every kind, sexual and non-sexual, is spiritual in that it is concerned with personality and community. It may also be spiritual in that it includes a sense of universal significance. In love’s young dream, or calf-love, there is a sense of the “divinity” of the beloved. In an obscure way he or she becomes a symbol of something universal. A gesture, a look, a tone of voice, may seem to be intimations of something superhuman. They promise something not yet experienced, not yet conceivable, but felt to be of immense significance. On the other hand, consider mature love, by which I mean love between two (or more) persons who have known one another for a long time, and who, in spite of inevitable conflicts, have grown together into an indissoluble symbiosis, in which each is necessary to the other and shaped by the other. Here the promise has been up to a point fulfilled; and the gift is precisely this symbiosis, this participation in a common life, this creation of a spiritual value which is impossible for either in isolation. In mature love there come moments in which one has a quite indubitable conviction that this little communion of diverse personalities is a symbol, all epitome of something very far-reaching and important in the universe. Cherish this conviction, by all means; but do not suppose that therefore there must be a God who is the almighty lover, and that human individuals must be immortal. One may feel imaginatively the presence, as it were, of the whole past biography of this most precious little community of two persons, and of the whole past of humanity, as essentially a precarious groping towards something spiritually far more developed, awakened. One may even feel, or seem to feel, possessed by that supreme something itself, by a very God of Love. But beware, beware! Any intellectual formulation of such experience is certain to be mainly false. Nevertheless the feeling itself is a source of strength and light. And this kind of living, one feels, is what human beings are for. In some obscure sense, far too difficult for our intellect to clarify, we are all instruments for this music, for the fulfilling of this spirit.

Personal love cannot be healthy if it is simply an end in itself. In one way or another the community of the lovers must include active partnership or comradeship in a common task, which may be the rearing of a family, or some external work common to both, or separate social undertakings which both value. This sense of partnership in a common task, conceived as more important than any private satisfaction, is the only sentiment which can effectively unite a large group of human beings. The common task may be good or bad, spiritual or non-spiritual. The unifying passion may be nothing more than the will for the group’s dominance over other groups, for instance in prestige or war or trade or economic imperialism or racial supremacy. One kind of group sentiment alone is genuinely spiritual, namely the will that the group shill be an effective instrument of the spirit, that its whole life shall be organized so as to make the most of all its members, that all its members may be as fully developed human persons as possible, consciously united in service of the spirit. Examples of associations of human beings dominated by this will in one form or another are the early Christian Church, the early French Revolution, the early Labour Movement in England, the early revolutionary Communist Party in Russia. All these I regard as cases of the widespread grasping of a spiritual value, in fact, of the supreme spiritual value, namely the rightness of true human fellowship or community.

The Russian case is most striking because owing to special circumstances the experience was combined with a wholesale rejection of metaphysical doctrines about the fundamentally “spiritual” nature of the universe. I should say that the Russian Revolution has proved that an essentially spiritual will, namely the passion for comradeship and right human relations, may effectively inspire large numbers of men without their fully realizing that their motive is spiritual, and without their believing in any metaphysical doctrines. It may be that since the early days of the Revolution the original revolutionary will has been to some extent confused by impulses which are not consistent with the spiritual goal, that there has been a good deal of violation of the spiritual goal in some respects; but this makes no difference to the fact that Lenin and his followers were inspired by the will to found a society in which the necessary conditions should be secured for the fulfilling of personality in very individual in free participation. in the common life. The Communists may have had an imperfect view of what, in its loftier reaches, the life of the spirit really involves; but they disciplined themselves heroically for an ideal which was essentially spiritual. And whatever their faults and their failures, I at least believe that they achieved a necessary economic revolution and founded a new kind of society in which the spirit may in time find fuller expression than has before been possible. The spirit is not served by our merely praising it. We have to live and if necessary die for it. There’s the rub! Further, I should guess that in many cases the social revolutionary’s passion is spiritual not only in that it is concerned with the spiritual value of comradeship but also that it is accompanied by at least some sense of universal significance; which, of course, mayor may not be consciously recognized as such. In striving to create a world-society in which every individual shall have the fullest possible opportunity of development in personality and in community with his fellows, the revolutionary is trying to release the frustrated spiritual potency of our species. He works for a future in which the spirit shall triumph on this planet. In the past, economic forces inevitably played the major part in determining the course of history; but in the future, near or far, men may succeed in founding a world in which the spiritual will is the main controlling power.”

Thank you Whalerider for the ‘heart’ and good wishes. I will try to use that tip of being ‘proactive’. I am sort of actually looking forward to the adventure, I think. I have often found myself in situations where you sort of have to ‘fly by the seat of your pants’. Some part of me must like it that way, or perhaps there is some lesson I refuse to learn.

Whalerider & Nigel – No. The financial part I did to myself. Part of it came from trying to help an old friend, and part of it from my general ineptness with finances. Although they certainly kept me poor when I was there 30 years ago, I can’t blame the cult on this one.

Elena – thank you for thinking of me. I will be fine, and will probably end up back in California, though I would love very much to come visit you and your beautiful country some day. I am truly touched by your caring.

Ellen – thank you for the music for the road. Made me feel good tonite. Great guitar, and a wonderful tune. May we all be ‘forever young’.

Hi ton – looks like back to California where I have an open invitation of shelter with a dear old friend of mine. Will know more in a couple of weeks. I will stay in touch with you.

Being busy with living and opening up. There is an incredible abundance of energy out there. There is so much potential we all have in us. I have being going back to the strength I had as a child. Just doing the same old small acts that made me happy. There is tremendous love and presence there. There is so much power in Trusting oneself and Life.

Elena, dear, the “Guru Papers” is a good book to read because it basically looks into the mechanics of authoritarian control. I personally think I need to be looking into my side of the story as well. So, next to the reading of the book I try to unmask my participation in the Cult. My findings guide me towards the fact that instead of following my inner strength, I was moving away from it. The basis of it is (and I am open to see more) self-destruction. The idea that I am not enough and I need to be worked on. When one is insecure about one’s presence in the world and starts looking outside for help and assistance, one is exposed to various forms of abuse. It starts with not trusting oneself. It starts with doubting one’s strength. It starts with questioning God’s presence in one. It starts with being afraid to look into oneself. It starts with doing all the other things in order to avoid doing that one thing one knows is meant to be doing. It starts with thinking one needs to ask for permission. It starts with thinking and avoid feeling and sensing.

Thank you Panorea for that “dear” and your post. That is, for bringing “all that love out there”, in here. It is greatly needed and appreciated, like the many posts that make us laugh while others allow us to mourn and cry.

286. ton – January 17, 2009

Ton, one of the things I most enjoyed about your post was the length! Thank you! It made me feel less guilty about the length of mine and confirmed to me that a long thought in a long form is often as necessary as a long thought in a short form!

I also enjoyed the text and yet would you consider that it is still groping in the nightmare of somewhat rigid opposites? Very delicately but still. I think the most liberating idea I’ve encountered in the past ten years is that the spiritual and the physical are in a constant state of interchange. That one feeds the other and they grow parallel to each other, so to speak and that we and the whole world around us are “the stage” in which that is happening all the time. Too much “spirituality” and we’re in the clouds, too much physicality and we’re in the mud: individually or socially. The challenge does not seem to be one or the other, but both. I encountered that idea in Steiner who beautifully puts it into practice and presents it in simple facts such as the ability of a human being to stand on two legs as a purely spiritual-physical characteristic. We have not yet been able to invent a two legged machine that can stand up. It doesn’t have the balance required to be “upright”. It lacks the spiritual force able to make it stand up. I also much enjoy his idea that a cow is “materializing” the spiritual while a bird is “spiritualizing” the material. If we were to transport the idea of “cow” to our very physical labour and the idea of “bird” to our very artistic endeavours, we would be able to grasp those ideas in our lives a little better. Beautiful physical labour such as agriculture is materializng the spiritual while equally beautiful artistic activity is spiritualizing the material. They are both equally needed. Both equally noble and the balance between them would help us understand that an artist is in no way better than a farmer, nor a businessman worse than either one. The pedantry with which some artists or educated people tend to think that they are better than farmers or blue collar workers, disregards that other “conscious being” within each other. Balancing the economy with both our physical and spiritual requirements would necessarily bring us to a much greater respect for the sacred process within each one of us for “materializing the spiritual” or “spiritualizing the material” are both equally “sacred”. In choosing one above the other, we fall in the “demonizing” or “divinizing” either one that quicly leads to pathological conditions, individually and socially.

If we look at the Fellowship which is our shared experience, we can verify that it divinized the spiritual in the form of influence C and Robert Burton and demonized the physical in the form of “life” and the member’s “lower self” developing a Cult with a tendency to self-flagellation and destruction. Even Robert is simply flagellating himself and the boys with his activities, for there is nothing in it noble enough for the “human” or “spiritual” in them to develop and on the contrary, plenty for the inhuman to take form and develop exquisite forms of corruption and crime.

It is interesting to observe that the degree of balance between the spiritual and the material in our regular life expresses itself in the health of our sexuality, personally or socially.

We could also consider this idea of the mutual integrity of the spiritual and the physical in other opposites such as man and woman and the individual and society. Understanding not only the mutual dependency and its conditioning but the wonderful reach of the compenetration of both forces, the beauty and greatness of their manifestation as One, leaves us the freedom to explore them not as fixed rigid forms but as fluent living processes.

Daily Cardiac,

I sincerely wish to apologize for the violence and threats with which I confronted you and your posts. Especially the threat of exposing each one of you if you continued to disregard the whole situation at hand which triggered in me the horror of not being able to reach my husband and his reasoning for many years. I take back that threat. I am not eager for you to come back and will challenge you like you challenge us but I will also try to respect the fact that many here appreciated the unidirectional conversation with you and sometimes even the rational dialogue.

All I can say for my self is that I am sorry I don’t have control over my vulnerability and still experience your doctrine as a very threatning attack on my well being and that of others.
Perhaps I would appreciate it if you took a different name. A heart-felt one and not one in which the heart is already dead. But even that is not a condition. Of course, if you don’t come back and show up in a year, like Glob, and tell us you’ve left the Fellowship, that too would be a very welcome visit.

ya elena, there are a lot ideas i don’t agree with from that stapeldon excerpt…. and in particular although i take it that the author is trying to reconcile polarities; the classic example here is categorizing “the spiritual” vs. “the material” but this sort of focus to think in useing these terminologies necessarily feeds an oppositional situation… as you indicate, and i think he’s getting to the same point, it is just as valid to say that the “material” is a dimension of “the spiritual” and therefore identical with it. ya, i didn’t post that as an endorsement of the author’s thinking, but supposed it could be food for thought…. or not…. thanks for responding… (i can endorse a mostly great story he wrote called called STARMAKER). posting that much from the website was not the intention, i thought i had edited a few pages from the end but apparently not…. must have been that second cocktail last night… apologizies for the length.

“… instead of following my inner strength, I was moving away from it. The basis of it is… self-destruction. The idea that I am not enough and I need to be worked on. When one is insecure about one’s presence in the world and starts looking outside for help and assistance, one is exposed to various forms of abuse. It starts with not trusting oneself. It starts with doubting one’s strength. It starts with questioning God’s presence in one. It starts with being afraid to look into oneself. It starts with doing all the other things in order to avoid doing that one thing one knows is meant to be doing.”

I have to admit, with all these postulations on how to see the world, I come back to something that gives me strength – “Accept what the play has been (YES, EVEN THE FOF), accept what IS NOW (for me, at this present time, ‘soft serendipity – thoughts preceding events and visions) and gather an inner strength for the future, whatever it may bring (the real purpose of Tarot – attitudes, not future events themselves). I have to say, Elena, I’m losing you these days. Others seem to more succinctly HIT THE MARK…..Nigel.

Nigel dearest, you’ve got all the right to lose me and find yourself wherever others hit the mark, just keep hitting the mark in yourself too so that you don’t lose yourself in anyone.

I, on the contrary, have found much relief in the soundness of your posts and have much enjoyed the fact that you seem to be doing well.

Rather than finding or losing yourself in me, a little digestion or dialogue of the issues themselves would be appreciated but I guess that takes a little more effort and this is just a blog! The capacity to discard a subject or a person with a yes or a no, leaves little room for dialogue.

I’ve been working with glass all day, which is a different kind of jewel and can understand why you so thoroughly enjoy your work!

I am sorry you’re losing me because I am in fact just beginning to find myself in this recent posts! Understanding that cults are breeding grounds for mass suicide from which all our individual misery sprout has finally put me at peace with the desperate search to understand what happened to us.

The next step will be to understand how it manipulates the individual into turning against him or her self. What does it use, why is it so successful. Of course, banging on Robert and the enablers is much more fun than realizing that the mechanism was so designed that we ourselves did most of the self-damage under their manipulation, which is what makes it so difficult to prove that they are responsible in any court. But confronting our “dream” with the life we were trying to escape, should bring us back to it with much greater understanding.

I hope you continue to bear with me for I could not move a single step without you. It is with profound gratitude that I cherish the presence of each and all of you here. With three older people in delicate conditions, your company is priceless to me. I’ve given up on the love you might have for me but not on the love I have for you.

Ton, thinking about it I realized that idea of mutual communication or interchange between the spirtual and physical is also much developed by Rodney Collin in Celestial influences. His examples are a little more scientific while Steiner just plays with them.

Would we get rid of the cow or the bird in our landscape?
Would we want to chose between either one of them?

I’ve been thinking about our conversation earlier and I didn’t wish to belittle the post you and Vena presented especially in the part that relates to inner work, I just wanted to emphasize that Ghandi was probably the greatest social activist of all times.

You seem to have some valuable things to say about that first aspect of that post and hopefully Vena too. What I’ve verified in that area is short but I’d be happy to expand it hearing about it from you.

I do try to re-read bloggers long posts when I cannot seem to hold the ‘thread’ from beginning to end. Thank you for reinforcing the effort to continue trying. I feel for me that being honest seems to bring the other person involved and myself into ‘middle ground’ and ‘connection’. I must admit that being forced to write 3,000 word essays every semester of my three-year part-time Certificate of Education course took a great deal out of me (although, since I still have all of them on disc, I could review my progress as a teacher). I am sure I could never write a novel. But poetry, critique and blog, YES! I feel I ‘middle’ in Martial and that the paunch is more due to anti-psychotics than evolving towards Jovial. The ‘inner man’, in emotions, is still the Sunchild, feeling immature at the age of 52, never having married or having had children and not even any lengthy relationships. But I feel lucky that I have my handicraft (as you have yours), my beautiful apartment and my friends and family, who do sometimes dominate me, but have my best interests at heart. This post is meant as an ‘opening of the heart’ with the hope that we can draw closer on the blogsite (I have to admit that I find the GF site a little too ‘chatty’ – a sort-of ‘isn’t it nice we’ve escaped the Fellowship together; see you next time I’m in Vienna’ slant to it). This site to me is DYNAMIC, RICH and REAL!…..Nigel.

Sorry to sound ignorant, but what exactly is the Apollo d’Oro? By the way, I almost always used to get a big ‘OOOOOH’ all-over about those Venus-Mercuries dressed as cowgirls (you mentioned tight pants?)…..Nigel.

In the time of my confession,
in the hour of my deepest need
When the pool of tears beneath my feet
flood every newborn seed
There’s a dyin’ voice within me
reaching out somewhere,
Toiling in the danger and in
the morals of despair.
Don’t have the inclination to
look back on any mistake,
Like Cain, I now behold this
chain of events that I must break.
In the fury of the moment I can
see the Master’s hand In every leaf that trembles,
in every grain of sand.

Oh, the flowers of indulgence
and the weeds of yesteryear,
Like criminals, they have choked
the breath of conscience and good cheer.
The sun beat down upon the
steps of time to light the way
To ease the pain of idleness
and the memory of decay.
I gaze into the doorway of
temptation’s angry flame
And every time I pass that
way I always hear my name.
Then onward in my journey
I come to understand
That every hair is numbered
like every grain of sand.

I have gone from rags to riches
in the sorrow of the night
In the violence of a summer’s dream,
in the chill of a wintry light,
In the bitter dance of loneliness
fading into space,
In the broken mirror of innocence
on each forgotten face.
I hear the ancient footsteps
like the motion of the sea
Sometimes I turn, there’s someone there,
other times it’s only me.
I am hanging in the balance
of the reality of man Like every sparrow falling,
like every grain of sand.

And I think that by now the average age in the Fellowship must be around 45. If you were not wearing tight pants in your twenties, you do not want to start at your fifties or sixties, do you? Or maybe yes.

Oh yes, they are also playing The Beatles at the Galleria (Academy). Isn’t it wonderful? You may go listen to the music there, then put on your pink tight pants, get on your high horse and go back home continuing dancing and partying.

We are giving some space to the lower self. Not too much, just a tiny bit. What a great life! Rejoice!

THE RAPE OF THE MIND: The Psychology of Thought Control, Menticide, and Brainwashing, by Joost A. M. Meerloo, M.D.
The panic of the “brainwashee” is the total confusion he suffers about all concepts.

“The Refinement of the Rack
All knowledge can be used either for good or for evil, and psychology is not immune to this general law. Psychology has delivered up to man new means of torture and intrusion into the mind. We must be more and more aware of what these methods and techniques are if we are successfully to fight them. They can often be more painful and mentally more paralyzing than the rack. Strong personalities can tolerate physical agony; often it serves to increase stubborn resistance. No matter what the constitution of the victim, physical torture finaly leads to a protective loss of consciousness. But to withstand mental torture leading to creeping mental breakdown demands an even stronger personality.

What we call brainwashing (a word derived from the Chinese “Hsi Nao”) is an elaborate ritual of systematic indoctrination, conversion, and self accusation used to change non Communists into submissive followers of the party (Hunter). “Menticide” is a word coined by me and derived from “mens”, the mind, and “caedere”, to kill.
[NOTE: Here I followed the etymology used by the United Nations to form the word “genocide,” meaning the systematic destruction of racial groups.

Both words indicate the same perverted refinement of the rack, putting it on what appears to be a more acceptable level. But it is a thousand times worse and a thousand times more useful to the inquisitor.

Menticide is an old crime against the human mind and spirit but systematized anew. It is an organized system of psychological intervention and judicial perversion through which a powerful dictator can imprint his own opportunistic thoughts upon the minds of those he plans to use and destroy. The terrorized victims finally find themselves compelled to express complete conformity to the tyrant’s wishes. Through court procedures, at which the victim mechanically reels off an inner record which has been prepared by his inquisitors during a preceding period, public opinion is lulled and thrown off guard. “A real traitor has been punished,” people think. “The man has confessed!” His confession can be used for propaganda, for the cold war, to instill fear and terror, to accuse the enemy falsely, or to exercise a constant mental pressure upon others.”

___________Continuing the parallel between cults and other totalitarian environments, aren’t members who leave or are thrown out of the Fellowship Cult treated with a similar attitude to this one? Are Daily Cardiac’s words precisely on that tone? That they failed to understand the Fellowship? To make the necessary efforts? To present the idea that they just wanted money from the Fellowship if they sued it?
But in the Fellowship nothing was public, not even having a man confess. Girard or another enabler took care of imprinting in the victim the feeling that he was simply not “school material”. Aren’t the accounts from Yesri Baba and others in this vein? In the cult, the lack of public life is what guarantees its continuation. The fact that people don’t really know what is going on, reinforces the fear and self suggestion. ________
One important result of this procedure is the great confusion it creates in the mind of every observer, friend or foe. In the end no one knows how to distinguish truth from falsehood. The totalitarian potentate, in order to break down the minds of men, first needs widespread mental chaos and verbal confusion, because both paralyze his opposition and cause the morale of the enemy to deteriorate unless his adversaries are aware of the dictator’s real aim. From then on he can start to build up his system of conformity.

________In the cult, the confusion is created by the gradual dismantling of the member’s personality, that is, not only the imaginary picture he has of himself but everything of which “himself” is composed: The separation from family, friends and the world at large leaving him only with his job and means to earn money for the cult.________ The money making robot is gradually incorporated into the structure of the emotional life of the cult in which love for the guru prevails above any other form of love breaking up marriages, friendships and self trust.________

In both the Mindszenty and the Schwable cases, we have documented reports of the techniques of menticide as it has been used to break the minds and wills of courageous men.
Let us look first at the case of Cardinal Mindszenty, accused of misleading the Hungarian people and collaboration with the enemies, the United States. In his expose’ on Cardinal Mindszenty’s imprisonment, Stephen K. Swift graphically describes three typical phases in the psychological “processing” of political prisoners. The first phase is directed toward extorting confession. The victim is bombarded with questions day and night. He is inadequately and irregularly fed. He is allowed almost no rest and remains in the interrogation chamber for hours on end while his inquisitors take turns with him. Hungry, exhuasted, his eyes blurred and aching under unshaded lamps, the prisoner becomes little more than a hounded animal.

· “…when the Cardinal had been standing for sixty six hours [Swift reports], he closed his eyes and remained silent. He did not even reply to questions with denials. The colonel in charge of the shift tapped the Cardinal’s shoulder and asked why he did not respond. The Cardinal answered: ‘End it all. Kill me! I am ready to die!’ He was told that no harm would come to him; that he could end it all simply by answering certain questions.

· “…By Saturday forenoon he could hardly be recognized. He asked for another drink and this time it was refused. His feet and legs had swollen to such proportions that they caused him intense pain; he fell down several times.”

To the horrors the accused victim suffers from without must be added the horrors from within. He is pursued by the unsteadiness of his own mind, which cannot always produce the same answer to a repeated question. As a human being with a conscience he is pursued by possible hidden guilt feelings, however pious he may have been, that undermine his rational awareness of innocence. ==========The panic of the “brainwashee” is the total confusion he suffers about all concepts.========= His evaluations and norms are undermined. He cannot believe in anything objective any more except in the dictated and indoctrinated logic of those who are more powerful than he. The enemy knows that, far below the surface, human life is built up of inner contradictions. He uses this knowledge to defeat and confuse the brainwashee. The continual shift of interrogators makes it ever more impossible to believe in consecutive thinking. Hardly has the victim adjusted himself to one inquisitor when he has to change his focus of alertness to another one.
Yet, this inner clash of norms and concepts, this inner contradiction of ideologies and beliefs is part of the philosohpical sickenss of our time!=======
As a social being the Cardinal is pursued by the need for good human relationships and companionship. The constantly reiterated suggestion of his guilt urges him toward confession. As a suffering individual he is blackmailed by an inner need to be left alone and undisturbed, if only for a few minutes. From within and without he is inexorably driven toward signing the confession prepared by his persecutors. Why should he resist any longer? There are no visible witnesses to his heroism. He cannot prove his moral courage and rectitude after his death. =====The core of the strategy of menticide is the taking away of all hope, all anticipation, all belief in a future.======= It destroys the very elements which keep the mind alive. The victim is utterly alone.

________“The core of the strategy of menticide is the taking away of all hope, all anticipation, all belief in a future”
As we all know, these are severely cut off in cults by the doctrine. I do not have the whole list and if any of you can help put it together, I would appreciate it but let me give it a try:
Taking away hope:
The world is doomed and coming to an end.
All people in life are the six billion dead people on the planet.
You’re not in your ninth lifetime and must continue to work until you awaken.
We are all beggars
We are men number four…for ever in this lifetime because only seven will awaken.
Human beings awaken in a male vessel, therefore if you’re a woman, get off the hope train.
Only seven males will awaken in this School. (then Robert didn’t have to waste his time on the women his misogyny despised)
All anticipation, all belief in a future:
This is very interesting because the stone on which the Fellowship doctrine stands is precisely geared towards totally loosing hope for the future or vision of the future. The everlasting concept of being present was reduced to being in the moment without acknowledging the past or the future leaving the robots without a life. It works perfectly, perfectly diabolically.
The sequence now is equally pervasive. It takes care of the present by conceptualizing it rather than experiencing it. It imposes a rigor on the mind of the practitioners that impedes them from direct contact with life, having to go through the mind to perceive it. Think, eat, move, act, be…..
The member is suspended in the present without life. Not his past or his future but a present in which he is not: Not a conscious being, not a chosen one by the guru, not a divine being or a human being but the lower self that must work for three or four lifetimes until he or she awakens.
Why are all those of you who know this is true, not acting decisively for the closure of cults and the Fellowship cult in particular?
How much fear and lack of human solidarity are you still suffering that you cannot move yourself to act against these cults which are nothing but very modern sophisticated forms of torture that WE PAY FOR? How much more sick do we have to be to have invented institutions for our own self-destruction and you are not willing to at least try, with everything we’ve got, to stop them?_______-

I wish you all a good day. I’m sorry if the subject we are dealing with is difficult and depressing but avoiding it will not help us deal with it.

Text 7.
The following are excerpts of the Rape of the Mind that apply to cults. I urge you to check out the original text which allows one to better understand the context in totalitarian political environments after you’ve read these excerpts simply because by reading them you can assimilate them to the processes in totalitarian religious environments or cults without being marred by the physical atrocities subjects suffer in the former.

It is very interesting to look at the physical atrocities after and realize that although in cults the atrocities are not physical, the individual is rendered into a similar condition of helplessness particularly in relation to his own self. It is his own self what he must betray. Not just a nation or a group or another person. His own soul is what the member in the cult is turned against. Nothing else will guarantee his absolute blind devotion to the guru. Once this is recognized it is not difficult to understand why suicide and mass suicide are the outcome of Cults in their “Golden Age”.

The inquisitor is treacherously kind and knows exactly what he wants. He wants the victim captured by the influence of a slowly induced hypnosis.

A man will often try to hold out beyond the limits of his endurance because he continues to believe that his tormentors have some basic morality, that they will finally realize the enormity of their crimes and will leave him alone. This is a delusion. The only way to strengthen one’s defenses against an organized attack on the mind and will is to understand better what the enemy is trying to do and to outwit him. Of course, one can vow to hold out until death, but even the relief of death is in the hands of the inquisitor. People can be brought to the threshold of death and then be stimulated into life again so that the torments can be renewed. Attempts at suicide are foreseen and can be forestalled.

Time, fear, and continual pressure are known to create a menticidal hypnosis. The conscious part of the personality no longer takes part in the automatic confessions. The brainwashee lives in a trance, repeating the record grooved into him ind by somebody else. Fortunately, this, too, is known: as soon as the victim returns to normal circumstances, the panicky and hypnotic spell evaporates, and he again awakens into reality.

Time, fear, and continual pressure are known to create a menticidal hypnosis. The conscious part of the personality no longer takes part in the automatic confessions. The brainwashee lives in a trance, repeating the record grooved into him ind by somebody else. Fortunately, this, too, is known: as soon as the victim returns to normal circumstances, the panicky and hypnotic spell evaporates, and he again awakens into reality.

It is now technically possible to bring the human mind into a condition of enslavement and submission. The Schwable case and the cases of other prisoners of war are tragic examples of this, made even more tragic by our lack of understanding of the limits of heroism. We are just beginning to understand what these limits are, and how they are used, both politically and psycholgically, by the totalitarians. We have long since come to recognize the breast beating confession and the public recantation as propaganda tricks; now we are beginning to see ever more clearly how the totalitarians use menticide: deliberately, openly, unashamedly, as part of their oficial policy, as a means of consolidating and maintaining their power, though, of course, they give a different explanation to the whole procedure it’s all confessions of real and treacherous crimes.

This brutal totalitarian technique has at least one virtue, however. It is obvious and unmistakable, and we are learning to be on our guard against it, but as we shall see later, there are other subtler forms of mental intervention. They can be just as dangerous as the direct assault, precisely because they are more subtle and hence more difficult to detect. Often we are not aware of their action at all. They influence the mind so slowly and indirectly that we may not even realize what they have done to us.

Like totalitarian menticide, some of these less obvious forms of mental manipulation are political in purpose. Others are not. Even if they differ in intent, they can have the same consequences.

These subtle menticidal forces operate both within the mind and outside it. They have been strengthened in their effect by the growth in complexity of our civilization. The modern means of mass communication bring the entire world daily into each man’s home; the techniques of propaganda and salesmanship have been refined and systematized; there is scarcely any hiding place from the constant visual and verbal assault on the mind. The pressures of daily life impel more and more people to seek an easy escape from responsibility and maturity. Indeed, it is difficult to withstand these pressures; to many the offer of a political panacea is very tempting, to others the offer of escape through alcohol, drugs, or other artificial pleasures is irresistable.

Free men in a free society must learn not only to recognize this stealthy attack on mental integrity and fight it, but must learn also what there is in side man’s mind that makes him vulnerable to this attack, what it is that makes him, in many cases, actually long for a way out of the responsibilities that republican democracy and maturity place on him.

That is, if it doesn’t mean a lot of work for you. It’s a small difference but a significant one.

Thank you. If we lose readers and posters and you wish to shut us down, please let me know. When one’s been a witness, one has to testify and it does not matter where one does it. Sooner or later the testimony will be heard by those who need it.